Project funding from two separate pots has been fundamental in replacing aging site infrastructure and enhancing the reserves team site management. 30 x 30 CDEL funding from DEFRA administered via the Chilterns National Landscape has seen the upgrade of 1800m of livestock fencing at Pegsdon Hills and the installation of a purpose-built cattle handling facility. The site boundary was a drain of resources annually, with numerous posts needing to be replaced and sections of fence failing to retain grazing animals sufficiently. 

Big Chalk funding, again from DEFRA, administered by the National Landscapes Partnership, has allowed us to purchase various capital assets, including NoFence Cattle collars, a woodchipper, a portable cattle crush, an off-road trailer and brush cutters. These will be used on a suite of sites across the Chilterns National Landscape to aid our work, supporting habitat and livestock management. 

All through the short days of winter staff and volunteers have been steadily working across the suite of sites in the county, removing scrub, bramble and trees to open up the species rich grassland, diversifying trees age structures and clearing fence lines and access routes. The sites often support a range of plants that cannot compete with the woody growth, so this work is sometimes very targeted to allow them room to thrive (see header photo).

With the changing seasons comes a change in site activities. We are now looking to maintain the site fencing and access infrastructure such as kissing gates. These are primarily where we have grazing animals on site to assist with the removal of annual grass vegetation growth. Staff and volunteers will be visiting the sites over the coming months to assess what materials are required to repair any degraded structures and replace rotten posts.

Looking into the start of summer we will working with members of the monitoring and research team to assess the conditions of several of our grasslands, and also one of our larger wooded sites. Flitwick moor is a former peat extraction site which was worked up until the 1960’s, but it has since been colonised with a flush of wet woodland species including willow and alder. 

The drier sections of the site support silver birch and the very dry sections contain numerous oak trees. Interesting ground flora survives under this tree canopy, with some very rare mosses and wet ground loving plants in the more open areas. Unfortunately, getting to some sections of the site to complete the condition assessment will be tricky, especially in the more recently worked peat extraction areas.

The grazing livestock play a vital part in the management of a suite of the grassland sites across the county. We work with a few graziers and our own animals to get vegetation removed sensitively and co-ordinate this with our own site management, cutting and raking in areas where we can’t graze. Whilst we typically try to hold off grazing in the spring, there are sometimes reasons we need to get an early graze completed.

Sites will not always have sufficient pressure on them in the Autumn and Winter, possibly as the fencing was compromised, ground conditions for access weren’t suitable or perhaps no animals were available. If the winter walkovers show there is too dense a coverage of thick vegetation to allow a spring flush of sensitive plants the room they need, we can implement a shift in grazing timing. 

This may not suit all sites or species, so has to be carefully considered to avoid or limit side impacts. The key thing is to remove the dense vegetation without removing the wildflowers and cover for invertebrates. To assist with this we can control where the animals can access, sometimes by installing temporary electric fencing or by setting up digital exclusion zones on the cattle collars. The animals must still have access to water and we have to pay close attention to the ground cover to ensure there is sufficient food, but the results can be tailored better to suit the needs of the site.