10,000 Trees and an LoWS

Look at this! My little local woodland has now become a LoWS (Local Wildlife Site). Not exactly SSSI and this doesn't give the wood any legal protection, but the status has to be taken into account for any future planning activities.

Not only that…

While everyone watches and hopefully contributes to the topical discussion about the Forestry sell-off in England, our little local conservation group has taken matters in our own hands. With a huge  amount of planning and support, we are going to plant 10,ooo trees.

A pipe-dream? Perhaps, but when you consider 3,300 were planted last week, the target is not so far fetched as it might seem.

If you are wondering how this has been achieved then I will give you a very brief history.

I live very close to an ex-USAF airfield, which is still MOD property. The MOD still use the facilities for a variety of purposes and the runway is still active for Air Cadet gliders. There are a number of civilian workers who work on the base. About 7 years ago I canvassed them to form a Wildlife Group. One very active member was later made the Sustainability Manager for the site and of course had access to MOD resources and a direct link to Defence Estates which we were able to tap into.

With her relentless work and a little assistance from the rest of us carrying out site surveys of birds, mammals and plant life, we put together a compelling business case to ask for assistance to conserve and develop the area. The surveys have turned up some interesting finds like the rare Oxlip. Essex Wildlife Trust and the Woodland Trust took an interest and have also been heavily involved resulting in the LoWS status for the wood. A certain amount of financial assistance from the MOD helped fund the planting of the 3,300 trees with (hopefully) more to come during this year.

The planting was completed by a local woodland company. The trees are typical British woodland trees (Hornbeam, Oak, Ash, Beech) with lower lying shrubs like hawthorn around the edge. I’m trying to get the actual planting plan, but apparently the company took away the only copy.

The ‘new’ wood is actually an extension of an existing wood called Ostend Wood which is outside of the base. I am canvassing to get a few trees diverted to extend “my” wood (Park Wood) which is inside the fence. You can understand now why everyone was so keen for me to remove the fallow deer from inside the base (which, by the way, seems to have worked.)

The nest step is to get the area LNR (Local Nature Reserve) status, which means that it will get a certain amount of legal protection. Let’s hope the cutbacks don’t scupper the project too much.