Medway and Coastal Wetlands Volunteering Update
Medway Wetlands Team
At Wouldham the volunteers have been working on cutting the last patch of scrub at the bottom of the goat field, although this did mean trekking up and down the hill with all the tools. The scrub had grown too thick for the goats to be able to browse on and it made checking the goats difficult. Now the scrub has been cut, the goats will eat the fresh new growth and create space for chalk grassland flowers. Plus its fewer places for them to hide from the livestock checkers!
More scrub was cut at Holborough, focussing mainly in the “New Field”. We have been working to reduce the dominance of scrub in the field, keeping it open to encourage breeding waders such as lapwing and redshank. The scrub also out competes many of the wildflowers we find in the field over the summer, so by cutting the scrub it can benefit various species of pollinators.
In Peters Pit, scallops were cut into patches of scrub to maintain a diversity of ages of scrub within the reserve. In one of the scallops, a large number of man orchid rosettes were found that we previously hadn’t noticed before. Some of the cut scrub was chipped, although most was left to be chipped later date, as the ground is too wet to repeatedly drive over. The woodchip piles acts as hibernacula in the winter and possible egg laying sites for grass snakes in the summer.
The volunteers have also been working on cutting dogwood regrowth to reduce its dominance across the reserve. Although one section has had to be left as it is now underwater after all the rain we have had over the last couple of months. However, this will benefit the newts as it should mean that the ponds stay wet until the end of August when the juvenile newts emerge from the water.
As the winter work season has now ended, the volunteers will move onto the summer work programme – fixing fences, maintaining footpaths and surveys, such as water vole and orchid counts.
