Coetir Anian - Cambrian Wildwood

GlobalGiving Report

Cambrian Wildwood

March 2022 to May 2022

Site

More trees were planted during the winter and spring. Using ‘no fence’ tree planting techniques, the trees were planted in locations where they are unlikely to be browsed by the large herbivores. There are a few bits of steep ground where we have planted trees sticking out over the drop. Now we rely on two other methods. One method is planting in existing vegetation that provides protection, such as bramble or thorns. We are establishing new opportunities for this by planting a lot of thorn across the site. The other method is observation of the places where the horses and cattle do not go, due to the rough ground and absence of attractive grazing. These places are concentrated near the boundary with the private forestry property. We also planted trees in a small area fenced off to keep our horses off a bridleway. All the planting is low density around 5m spacing, and higher up it is very low density, more like 20m to 100m spacing. The species planted are hawthorn, blackthorn, scots pine, oak.

The peatland restoration project proceeded in March. Purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea) is not favoured by the herbivores even when it is green. During the winter it is dead and provides no nutrition - the horses do not eat it at all. The thick mat of dead grass prevents other plants from growing. The purple moor grass thrives because of its deep roots and creates big tussocks which make the ground inaccessible. An excavator was used to scrape small areas dominated by purple moor grass on the flatter, wetter ground. Most of these were planted with sphagnum plugs to help the area revert to sphagnum bog. Some scraped areas were not planted, to compare the two treatments.

Felled timber logs have been moved up the hill through the plantation to be stacked at the side of the track. These are transported to the shed for splitting and stacking, to be used as fire wood.

Herbivores

The horses came out of the winter in satisfactory condition and had their annual vet check in April. Two foals were born in April and another in May. The cattle were brought back to the site from the neighbouring property during April once the purple moor grass started to show its new green growth. In May the electric fence was reinstated along the upper track to keep the herbivores on the moorland for the summer. The horses and the cattle appear to be grazing widely over the site.

Education

In March we held the last Winter of Wellbeing days for kids and teenagers, where they learnt traditional skills such as candle making and wood carving and spent time in nature by a camp fire.

The Primary Schools programme started up again, with 3 schools continuing with their first year of activities, learning how to make fire. The groups in the last year were out planting their oak trees.

The Youth Camps are able to get back into full swing this year. We held two in May, with a group of young carers and a group from a deprived part of the local town. This year we are working with two schools and four other local organisations, having found it difficult to get the commitment from most schools, due to their difficulties finding the staff capacity and being under-resourced.

Well-being

Our new ‘Drws Agored’ (Open Door) programmes are dependent on being funded, and this has not yet been secured. Consequently, we have not proceeded with two camps for people in addiction recovery, but hope to go ahead with one later in the year.

We have been able to host groups of asylum seekers, however. The volunteers who assist the asylum seekers in Wolverhampton have been bringing groups along to our Volunteer Work Days. We have therefore made the days more social, with a camp fire, and laid on a variety of tasks of varying physical difficulty. The young men seem to appreciate doing some hard work or walking long distances. One chap from Ethiopia really misses his farm and his cattle, so he was delighted to interact with the Highland cattle on site.

Visits

The project continues to attract increasing attention from academics and from the media. We hosted five university student visits during this period, generally groups of Masters students.

Monitoring habitats

The peatland areas where the purple moor grass was scraped was monitored using fixed point photography and vegetation survey, before and after the scraping.

On the Volunteer Work Day in May we surveyed for birds and flowers to complete species lists.

Other monitoring

Other monitoring work includes counting numbers of visitors to the site using automated counters. And the experiences of people attending project activities.

We carry out qualitative monitoring of our education and wellbeing programmes by collecting feedback from participants.

Don’t forget to look at our website cambrianwildwood.org where you can find out so much about the project and keep up to date with our news items. And contact us if you want to be on our newsletter mailing list.

Links:

• Project website

Site

The trees planted in 2019 had their third growing season this year and showed really good growth, having got their roots established and due to good growing conditions this year. On the peatland area, the ponds created by blocking ditches are becoming colonised with aquatic sphagnum, which is a fantastic development, showing the area is reverting to blanket bog, an important habitat type that sequesters more carbon than a forest area, in the right conditions – that is, being waterlogged.

Herbivores

The cattle were taken off the site to their neighbouring, more productive winter pasture. The horses have maintained good condition through the winter, with the two foals looking good. The ‘teenagers’, the 1 to 3 year olds, are often off by themselves keeping away from the older horses, though generally the herd remains all together.

Site work

Much of the work on site is carried out on the monthly volunteer work days. In October we worked on the neighbouring forestry property owned by Welsh Government. The area adjacent to our site has been restored to natural habitats of heathland with scattered native trees. A large amount of the non-native Sitka spruce – the commercial timber species – started regenerating in the area. We cut this using hand tools, to protect the native habitat from being dominated by spruce in years to come. In November, we planted willow cuttings to create areas of wet woodland. In January we shifted cut logs from the larch plantation to be processed into fire wood for camp fires. We will be planting trees over the next two work days.

We took some aspen cuttings from a stand in our ancient woodland and planted the cuttings in an open area by the river. One day, when beavers have returned to this catchment, they will be pleased to find their favourite tree species growing here.

There was a bumper crop of rowan berries this year. We spent a day cutting branches laden with berries and leaving them in some of the remote, treeless parts of the site. The idea is that birds will find the berries and spread them around the place, resulting in the germination of some trees.

Every year we collect tree seeds to give to a nursery to grow into trees for us, and to take into schools so they can grow trees to later plant on site. This year we collected a lot of hawthorn berries.

We have developed a project and been awarded a grant for peatland restoration. Having blocked the drainage grips, we have seen significant changes in the new ponds and next to the ditches where the ground has become waterlogged. Elsewhere, however, changes have been less obvious. The area is dominated by a grass species called purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea) which is not favoured by the herbivores even when it is green. During the winter it is dead and provides no nutrition - the horses do not eat it at all. The thick mat of dead grass prevents other plants from growing. The purple moor grass thrives because of its deep roots and creates big tussocks which make the ground inaccessible. The project will use an excavator to scrape small areas of purple moor grass on the flatter, wetter areas. Most of these will be planted with sphagnum plugs to help the area revert to sphagnum bog. Some scraped areas will not be planted, to compare the two treatments.

Education

The Primary School groups continued to visit the site during the autumn. Since January we have been hosting groups on Saturdays and during the half-term holiday where they have been learning skills such as candle making and felt making, and generally enjoying being out in nature and hanging out by the camp fire.

Well-being

We are developing our new wellbeing programme for adults and families and calling it ‘Drws Agored’ (‘Open Door’ in English). Our pilot programme with people in addiction recovery during the summer was part of this. In October we hosted a group of asylum seekers with a view to continuing this in the summer with days out and a camp. The people are in accommodation in the cities of Birmingham and Wolverhampton, not too far from Cambrian Wildwood, waiting to hear about their applications for asylum, sometimes for many years. They are not permitted to work and have hardly any resources, so it is difficult for them to get away from the city, or participate in activities to take their mind off their predicament. All of them have escaped from dangerous and unpleasant circumstances. Many are from rural areas, so not used to city life. It was such a pleasure to welcome them to our wild and beautiful landscape and to see how much they appreciated the place and the social contact.

In December, as part of National Tree Week, we held a Tree Connection Day, learning about tree medicines and connecting deeply with individual trees.

Monitoring habitats

We have carried out further baseline surveys of the peatland areas so that we can monitor change following the peatland restoration work.

Other monitoring

Other monitoring work includes counting numbers of visitors to the site using automated counters. And the experiences of people attending project activities.

We carry out qualitative monitoring of our education and wellbeing programmes by collecting feedback from participants.

Don’t forget to look at our website cambrianwildwood.org where you can find out so much about the project and keep up to date with our news items. And contact us if you want to be on our newsletter mailing list.

Links:

• Project website