Medway and Coastal Wetlands Volunteering Update
Medway Wetlands Team
At Wouldham, the volunteers spend a bit of time working in the valley – cutting dogwood regrowth to prevent the scrub from encroaching onto the chalk grassland. The gate to the valley was also replaced and the posts swapped over, so that the gate opens the opposite way. Hopefully this will make reversing the bowser down the track a little easier! The path down to the valley was also cut and the nettles raked away – the start of my butterfly transect is now a little less painful!
The volunteers worked their way through a list of odd jobs at Holborough – fixing post and rail fencing, litter-picking, putting up new welcome signage and fitting new kissing gates. The volunteers also cut back some scrub to replenish a dead hedge to prevent bikers from accessing sensitive areas.
Scrub was cut and raked at Peters Pit, to prevent a field being dominated by sycamore and dogwood saplings. In the summer, this field is full of wild marjoram, st john’s wort and bird’s foot trefoil and tends to have the highest butterfly numbers on the reserve. The volunteers have also begun the slow task of replacing fencing that has reached the end of its lifespan. The fence was replaced with a mixture of chestnut and metal clipex posts.
The metal posts are more expensive but last a lot longer than wooden ones. I was unsure as to how well they would go in (Peters Pit has little/no soil – just solid chalk), but the petrol post-rammer made short work of banging the posts in. The metal posts also have the benefit of simply clipping the wire mesh straight onto the post, with no need for staples and having to mark out the heights of the mesh and two strands of barbed wire.
Over the next month, the volunteers will be working on replacing more fencing, at Peters Pit and at Wouldham. The fencing at Wouldham has already been started, something which kept our goats entertained for a while! The footpaths at Holborough will also need cutting before goat’s rue cutting begins at the end of July.
