The Annual Meeting of the Blyth Woods group in the Village Hall on 9th May was very well attended.
It began with a report by Alan Miller, our Chairman, on the year’s activities, from monitoring the nest boxes in Vicarage Grove, increasing the diversity in Malster’s Little Field through spreading a combination of seed, green hay and plug plants, to clearing more holly in Vicarage Grove (which has resulted in a wonderful carpet of bluebells this year), as well as managing the new trees and removing or replacing guards. Our June Bioblitz in Grove Piece resulted in twenty-eight new species found, mainly plants and invertebrates (this year’s Bioblitz is on 13th July, when we will be looking particularly at grasses), and a fungi survey was carried out in October. Vicarage Grove is now on the Ancient Woodland Register.
Extra fruit trees were planted and mulched in the Merton Wood Orchard. The information board in Grove Piece has been updated and two new direction signs installed. The imaginative programme with Wenhaston Primary School, educational and fun, continues successfully and is much enjoyed by the children. As well as the various community events in our Village Hall, we attended the Halesworth Climate Conference.
Finally, we hope to secure another piece of land later in the year – watch this space!
Alan reminded everyone that at last year’s Annual Meeting we formed Wilder Wenhaston, which now involves over forty people. It is currently undertaking survey work on the river Blyth, monitoring pollution and wildlife (which turned out to be very relevant to the content of our speaker’s talk).
Alan finished by thanking all the volunteers who have so kindly helped us during the year, before we had a break for wine, soft drinks and delicious home-made refreshments.
After that we had an illuminating and concerning talk from Darren Tansley, the Wilder Rivers and Protected Species Manager of the Essex Wildlife Trust, on ‘Conservation at a Landscape Scale.’ He was such a passionate and articulate speaker that he held us all transfixed.
He began by asking, ‘What is a river?’
His slides showed how the natural course of a river has been forcibly altered and simplified by man over time into a straight channel for his convenience. The flooding that this causes in winter, the so-called ‘flood plain’, is the river trying to revert to its original course.
In addition, there are threats to the connectivity of a river’s habitat: human population growth and need for new housing has resulted in houses being built in the wrong place; climate change and man’s behaviour has impacted wildlife (which uses the river as an essential artery), and caused a biodiversity crisis; and we now have sewage in our rivers for various reasons – there were, for instance, 2,000 spills of sewage into one Essex river in a year. Minute debris from car tires, etc, also goes straight into any river close to a road. Plastic pollution is building up: plastic flows all the way to estuaries and tiny particles are swallowed by fish and small mammals. We have non-native species that should not naturally be there, such as floating pennywort, which covers the surface and blocks out vital oxygen for fish.
We are responsible for other threats to the river’s wildlife: the gates and locks that fish can’t swim past, the weirs that are impassable for fish, the removal of branches that provide shade and shelter for young fish to shoal. Flooding impacts the burrowers on the river bank, such as voles, which try to block their precious holes with earth,(much as we do with our sandbags!).
Soil and water are our most important resources. So what can we do?
We must stop taking out meanders and restore the old river channels.
We must restore the hedgerows that prevent fields flooding into each other.
We should increase the beaver population. They slow up flood water with their dams and increase biodiversity.
We should remove the barriers we’ve created and create more shade on the banks, so that fish don’t die in the heat.
Darren finished on a positive note. We are the only region in the UK with an expanding water vole population. This is because their predator, mink, has been eradicate by a programme of ‘smart’ traps.
Patricia Elliot.
Blyth Woods 