The team from Lilbourne Meadows have been coppicing at High Wood and Meadow. We had two days of staff and Volunteer Reserves Officers coppicing hazel and removing some trees. This was followed by four days with the volunteer teams helping to construct shelters to protect the hazel and make habitat piles with the logs and generally tidying up after us!

We remove some trees to let in more light to encourage regrowth of the hazel and other ground flora. The hazel requires protection from the deer that would browse the fresh growth in the Spring. We use most of the cut hazel to build the natural tree shelters. It is encouraging to see that where this method was used last year the hazel has come back strongly and some growth is over 2m tall. Some of the cut hazel is also brought back to Lilbourne Meadows and used in hedgelaying.

In addition to this we have constructed a deer exclosure using deer netting. An exclosure prevents deer entering an area of the wood and is used to demonstrate the difference in impacts between areas with no grazing/browsing (inside exclosure) and adjacent grazed/browsed areas (i.e. the area outside the exclosure). This will give an indication of the effect that deer are having on the potential growth of a habitat.

Many thanks to all of those that have helped during the last month, and I look forward to seeing what grows in this coppice coup over the Spring and Summer next year.