Reserves Highlights

Eamonn Lawlor, Senior Reserves Office (West Cambridgeshire)

Lattersey Nature Reserve

A group of volunteers from the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre joined our team this July to help remove a section of dilapidated boardwalk. 

The boardwalk, quite lengthy and being built of wood in a wetland environment, began decaying in recent years and at a rate which we’ve struggled to keep pace with.  We’ve been investing heavily in terms of time, effort and money annually. So, this year we came to a decision to remove part of the boardwalk to reduce the amount of work and investment needed going forward.  

Temperatures were expected to reach 28 degrees centigrade on the day so we weren’t too optimistic about getting a lot of work done with the group. To our surprise though they got to work with great gusto and stripped out 30m of the boardwalk, despite the heat. People love to smash things up! The nearby tree canopy certainly helped to keep everyone cooler and it was nice to see volunteers bringing along some cool ice pops and water melons share around. 

Our thanks to everyone, including Jackie Prebble, Warden for Lattersey nature reserve, who came out in support on the day. 

Brampton Wood

We’ve been winching out tree logs from our ride side copse this June and July. Once pulled onto the grass rides we had a contractor transport them down to the storage yard for selling on as fire wood or chipped for biomass fuel. In total we moved 30-40 tonnes of wood. The revenue from this helps to offset any costs we incur to manage the wood throughout the year. 

It won’t be long now before our once-a-month weekend volunteer work party resumes at the wood. They run from September to March/April.

 We’re looking for new volunteers and more wardens to join our team. We currently have one warden running the work party and another warden helping around the wood. The new wardens could help with the running of the work party, a very friendly and welcoming bunch. If you’re interested or know of someone else who might be, get in contact with Eamonn Lawlor, Senior Reserves Officer, Eamonn.lawlor@wildlifebcn.org

Wansford Pasture

Headland cuts on some of our meadows started in June with volunteers from the Peterborough Mid-Week team joining us at Wansford Meadow. 

Initially concerned we may have been a bit heavy handed with the mower, our hardworking volunteers proved us wrong. They gave 110% on challenging terrain and in very warm weather. It was a great day, and we couldn't do what we do without them. Thank you to all our volunteers.

Southorpe Meadow

West Cambs Reserves Officers accompanied our Peterborough Mid-Week Volunteer team this June to Southorpe Meadow, where they carried out an orchid count. 

Southorpe Meadow is one of the Trust’s most diverse meadows in Cambridgeshire and boasts seven different species of orchid, these being: Common Spotted Orchid, Southern Marsh Orchid, Bee Orchid, Greater Butterfly Orchid, Pyramidal Orchid, Green Winged Orchid and Twayblade. The majority are Common Spotted and Southern Marsh Orchids. The surveying was carried out with volunteers walking straight lines up and down the meadow and calling out orchids as they saw them. Our reserve officers kept count. In 2024, the orchids numbered an impressive 5072 individuals. This year, however, we counted a total of 7384. Quite a show for a field only 2 hectares in size.

News from the Trumpington Team - Jenny Smith (Ranger)

Our grassland at Trumpington Meadows looked lovely in late spring as the wildflowers started to bloom and thankfully higher insect numbers were observed across the site than last year. Unfortunately, with the lack of rain the site soon started to look very brown and crispy (as seen on BBC Breakfast!), so we hope that the next generation of insects will have found enough to eat to get them through to next year. The hay cut went ahead as usual with plenty of warm weather to dry it out so it was completed in record time, though with a lower bale count than usual. We also welcomed our Belted Galloway cows from The Wandering Herd back to the southern meadows and have had the excitement of new calves being born on site to grow the herd.

Becky recorded an episode of our podcast, In Conservation, at Trumpington Meadows talking about how we manage the meadows and the wildlife that can be found here, listen here.

Skaters’ Meadow

We managed to get a hay cut done for the first time in several years on this small Cambridge meadow, thanks to getting a new access route across neighbouring farmland agreed and installed over winter. Hopefully this will turn around the declining quality of this site and eventually get some of the species back that have not been seen in recent years.

Beechwoods and Lower Wood

With the hustle and bustle of our winter work behind us, the spring and summer give us an opportunity to take stock of our woodland reserves – almost literally for some things! In Lower Wood we have been busy assessing the health of the wood as Ash Dieback continues to have a significant impact on it’s structure. Woodland condition surveys allow us to monitor the diseases progress and how the wood is regenerating. Alongside, we are also monitoring the deer population and how this is impacting both the wood’s recovery and the existing ground flora – in particular the oxlip and bluebell populations.

At Beechwoods we have carried out the annual survey of the white helleborines, which involves counting numbers of flowering and non-flowering plants along set transects. We’ve also been looking at the diversity of flora along our chalk grassland rides as we try to expand these into glades throughout the new plantation.

All these types of survey give an idea of the general, and specific population, health of the reserves and can shape our management of the wood for years to come.   

Grafham Water - Greg Belcher (Senior Reserves Officer)

Spring always brings a variety to proceedings on the reserve, getting ready for what’s coming and finishing up the last of the winter work. One of the first tasks is to check the fencing in the grassland areas that are to be grazed – it’s never good when cattle escape as has happened to me on a couple of occasions in the past! 

After a few years of using a grazier based in Newmarket, not an ideal situation for us or the grazier, a chance discussion on a break in a first aid course has led to me ‘borrowing’ four young steers from my colleagues in Northants. 

They have done an excellent job so far and will probably stay with me until late October, conditions allowing.  The blond one is called Boris (I can’t think why!?).

Another, completely unrelated, job in preparation for the summer in the production of charcoal ready for sale in the BBQ season. The wood used is all obtained from thinning and felling works on the reserves, the easier accessed logs being extracted and processed to firewood size and left to season for a year or two, depending on the tree species.  

We have two 1.8m diameter kilns at Grafham, which allows one to be loaded and burnt whilst the other cools ready for emptying.  Each burn uses approximately a tonne of timber and produces around forty 4kg bags of charcoal.  

This is sold through a couple of retail outlets and directly to the public. Normally demand can be met with a couple of burns a year but occasionally a third is necessary.  The process is incredibly labour intensive with both loading and unloading being manual tasks.  The Grafham volunteer team help out and the activity could not take place without them.

Taking us back to the woodland, Grafham has been one of the sites chosen for a study into natural regeneration in secondary woodland, a Forestry Commission initiative looking at all aspects of flora and fauna in plantation woodlands next to relict ancient woodlands.  

Piggybacking on this, a PhD student has this year been in and installed on several oak trees with the plantation dendrometers, devices that actually measure the growth rate of the trees.  They will stay in place for a couple of years and together with cores taken from the trees will give data to help study the effect of climate change on the growth response of Oak trees in planted sites.

The weather this year seems to have been particularly kind and as a result we have had increases in existing populations and also some new records on site.  Butterflies seem to have done well with Silver-washed Fritillaries seen in greater numbers than previously and also expanding their range to encompass both woodlands on site. Another exciting spot was the report , by a Trust colleague visiting the site with his family, of a White Admiral, I believe the first on site for a very long time.  

Another group that has appeared to benefit from the gentle spring condition is our population of Common Spotted Orchids.  A site wide count of the number of flower spikes was instituted in 2014 and apart form one or two blips the population has risen steadily from just under 500 to 3361 last year.  This year’s count, another task that would impossible without the volunteer team, produced the staggering figure of 9659 flower spikes, a near 200% increase in a year.