Two weeks ago I was sat in an air-conditioned office, 31 floors up and looking out over London. My working day consisted of spreadsheets, presentations and project plans. Not to mention a four hour daily commute, a sardine simulator known as the London Underground at rush hour and of course a 10 minute wait in the queue for the elevator to get to my desk.
How things have changed! For the next six months I am a residential volunteer with the RSPB and part of the Exe Estuary team.
My busy commuter train has been replaced by short cycle ride to the reserve team’s office which is adjacent to Exminster Marsh.
I no longer gaze through a window at a city skyline, in fact, unless you count looking through the windscreen of a truck, I’m rarely confronted with windows. My office is the great outdoors and the climate control is very much in the hands of the Great British Weather.
Spreadsheets give way to hedge-trimmers, strimmers and power-tools. Presentations are now annotations on survey maps for breeding birds and dragonfly (see below). Project plans are hydrological features and networks of drains and sluices which need to monitored and managed.
In short, I’m not in Kansas anymore! It is however a privilege to be here.
So here is my main observation from my first eight days working on the Exe Estuary.
It takes a lot to run a reserve!! Allow me to elaborate:
If you think it is simply a case of putting a fence around a bit of land it and not letting anyone build on it, you are, to put it bluntly, wrong!
Well okay, fences are involved, but even they are more complicated than they first appear. For example let’s consider predator fences. It turns out that these fences aren’t actually hunting anything, but are crucial in protecting the birds, eggs and chicks of ground nesting species such as lapwing from foxes and badgers.
The impact of installing the electric predator fence around the Powderham site in 2010/11 was phenomenal as I learnt this week. Productivity increased from around 0.5 lapwing fledged chicks per nesting pair in 2011, to 2.1 in 2013 and 1.9 in 2014. For it to be effective though, the fence has to be working. This means that it is subject to regular checks throughout the week to ensure that there are no weak spots, no breaks in the circuit and to check that nothing is trying to bury under it.
Incidentally, normally we check the fence and circuits with a voltmeter, but I can personally vouch for the fact that you get a fairly good indication if you forget where you are and rest your arm on the top of it!
If you are visiting you may also see elaborate fences to corral and handle cattle, all of which are subjecting to checking and ongoing maintenance and cycles of replacement. There are stock fences to act as perimeters to prevent grazing animals escaping their fields and also post and rail fences which may be used for a variety of purposes including gate-wings. I only mention the latter as Laura, Tom and I happen to have built a new gate-wing this week to make one of the Exminster Marsh fields more secure and reduce the risk of a daring bovine escape attempt. Of course, if they happen to jump it on a motorcycle then fair play as we didn’t see that one coming.
Above: Cows planning their Great Escape, or just after our lunch?
Above: Our new gate-wing.
Of course I said that it wasn’t just about fencing and it really isn’t. Perhaps one of the biggest things that has struck me since starting is the complexity of responsible land ownership and how contentious this can be.
The RSPB makes many of its fantastic reserves, including the Exe Estuary sites, available to the public. This is undoubtedly a great thing and probably one of the main ways that people get to interact with the RSPB. Of course balancing public access for a variety of users against the conservation aims and aspirations of the RSPB has the potential to produce conflict. For me this was brought into focus during a conversation with a local birder who I met briefly at the Bowling Green site.
At this point I should stress that this was not a confrontational conversation, but an example of the positive engagement and two way communication that has obviously exists between the RSPB and the local communities and reserve users. The individual with whom I spoke was highlighting that following some ditch clearing work carried out over the winter a nesting Cetti’s Warbler in an adjacent hedgerow had been disturbed and left the area. They were further concerned that additional work further up the ditch could impact resident Water Rail.
I have to say, that the latent birder in me felt slightly conflicted with this. I’m here as a volunteer as I’m interested in the preservation of wildlife, but I also recognise that sometimes in order to manage the habitat and maintain them in a good state for targeted species we sometimes have to take difficult decisions. As with almost everything in life, it seems good communication is critical in assessing, managing and making these decisions. The individual with whom I spoke was very understanding of the work we are undertaking and why we are doing it. On reflection I am glad that I had this conversation, which helped me appreciate, to some degree, the type of complexities that come with managing a reserve.
A significant part of the work is also in ensuring that the reserve is well presented and safe. For anyone familiar with health and safety and risk assessment, it will come as no surprise to learn that the reserve has to meet stringent standards to protect visitors, employees, contractors and volunteers. Visitors are likely to see us out over the summer armed with strimmers, trimmers, rakes and shears. As nature gears up to its productive best we will be making sure that paths and rights of way remain clear and accessible so you can enjoy your visit. Unfortunately this isn’t always the quietest activity, but rest assured we are normally concentrated in a small area, so there will be plenty of peaceful of corners for you to relax in as you make your way around the reserves.
All of the above is important, but perhaps the most startling revelation is the realisation that the very nature of the Exe Estuary habitats is only achieved through management and manipulation of the land and the water systems that permeate the reserves. As I learnt from a guided walk led by the site manager, Peter, which I joined with members from the local RSPB group, without the scrapes, ditches and careful water level management via a series of sluices and pumps, much of the reserve could easily revert back to salt marsh.
I’m still getting to grips with the hydrology of the reserves and hope to write a more coherent explanation of this in the future, but it still impresses me that a landscape that looks so natural is actually so carefully orchestrated, planned and nurtured to make it as rich and diverse as it is.
Above: Using my extensive experience (day two!) to explain how this particular sluice and pump works to a fellow volunteer after strimming the area around the solar panels to keep them clear.
So, I could go on, but I feel as though I have enough for this week. I hope at least some of it is of interest. For those curious about what is going on around the reserves, there is a short round-up of some my key highlights below.
Take care and have a great weekend.
Phill
Enjoy!