WOOD & WATER: IMPROVING CHALK STREAM HABITAT WITH TREES

Mike Blackmore, Wessex Rivers Trust explains why trees are one of the best natural materials available and describe some of the techniques for using them to improve habitat on our chalk streams.

 Mike has over 10 years’ full-time experience in river restoration design and delivery. This includes projects across Southern England and South Wales, working with various government agencies, NGOs, angling clubs and community groups.

TRAINS and BOATS and PLANES – and TREES

A Zoom recording from a talk delivered by Terry Hill on 11th November 2021

Our trees, woodlands and forests are never static; they grow, die and regenerate. Trees, woodland and timber are increasingly integral to the way we live, work and play – and that includes travelling. But they can exist for centuries, or longer. During the building of UK’s first high speed railway, HS1, some ancient woodland* was taken and was offset by new and authentic woodland. Why and how was this done? Terry Hill CBE FREng has lived in St Albans for over 50 years. He was Programme Director at Union Railways, the company that built HS1, and was Chair of Arup, a global independent technology consultancy. Arup employs nearly 20,000 people, amongst them environmentalists and timber specialists. Terry has been a Non-Executive Director and Chair of many organisations including Crossrail Ltd (planned to open next year as London Underground’s Elizabeth Line), the Connected Places Catapult Ltd, a cities and transport innovation funder and is currently Chair of the Independent Transport Commission, a research charity, and Trustee of the Ove Arup Foundation.

Password: ?7!2y!Fu

SLOW GARDENING

Suggestions for uncomplicated ways of planting and managing a hedge or line of shrubs, and generally working less effortfully, with nature rather than against it.

WINTER WOODLAND SPOTTER SHEET

Andy Holtham’s created this delightful tree-focused Spotter Sheet for our Winter Discovery Trail event on 28th December 2021.

TREES AND THE UK 25-YEAR ENVIRONMENT PLAN

At a Tree Council Tree Warden Conference attended by Kate Bretherton, it was pointed out that trees are part of the solution to every one of the top 10 targets for improving the UK environment as set out in the UK 25-Year Environment Plan The Exhibition addresses the ways that both trees and hedges contribute to each of these targets. Look for them and think about what you can do to help trees do their job.

URBAN HEDGEROWS AND THE CLIMATE CHANGE COMMITTEE REPORT 2019

What prompted Kate Bretherton to cut out the equivalent of 12.8km of sticky felt and ask her son John to etch a map of Bernards Heath on which to stick the strips of green felt to represent hedges in gardens?  Kate also asked for a cut-out map of Britain showing St Albans as a dot in the right place, and a map of St Albans showing Bernards Heath as a dot within it. Kate had lived in one of the houses on the map and she got to thinking about what the effect would be if she had planted a hedge around her back garden and so had her neighbours and their neighbours. What prompted Kate was reading that the Climate Change Committee Report of 2019 included a proposal by government scientists that extending hedges by 40% is one of the key changes needed to reach net-zero carbon by 2050. 500,000km of hedgerow in the UK. Extending this by 40% would require the creation of 200,000km of new hedges across rural and urban landscapes – which equates to about half the length of Britain’s road network. The sequence of maps in the Exhibition shows graphically how planting hedges in gardens in a geographically tiny spot can make a significant contribution to UK targets for mitigating climate change. Wilderhood Watch in their ‘Plant a Hedge Project’, inspired by the Exhibition, give advice on how easily a hedge can be planted and cared for and what great benefits a hedge provides to birds, frogs, toads and pollinators. 

HEDGES IN THE LANDSCAPE

What prompted Kate to ask Donato Cinicolo to create a model hedge as closely as possible representing the real hedge featured in the Exhibition video about hedge laying? While Kate sat watching the video being made, she could see the reality of that hedge as a woodland corridor escape route for wildlife trapped in the small gene pool of a patch of woodland at one end of the hedge to a copse of trees at the other where unrelated mates might be found. She could see the soil above the hedge. Soil holds 80% of bio-terrestrial carbon, we read, yet here the soil was dramatically bare and exposed to wind and rain. There was not a weed in sight so a herbicide must have been used. Kate could see how rain would wash the herbicide through the soil towards the river, but that the hedge with its network of well-established roots would filter the pollutants from the water before it reached the river. Frogs, toads, and newts that sheltered in the hedge over winter could be sure, when the time came, of mating in clean water with fellow creatures from up and down the river. This Kate could see as the reality behind the words in reports: ‘Hedges sequester carbon both in woody growth above ground and in roots, leaf litter and other soil organic matter at and below ground level. In addition, hedges across slopes capture eroding soil and can increase soil organic carbon for up to 60m uphill. In contrast to some of the other forms of carbon capture proposed in the report, hedges are a low-risk way of capturing carbon and provide multiple benefits.’ See http://www.hedgelink.org.uk/index.php?news=17 and https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/02/reservoirs-of-life-hedgerows-help-uk-net-zero-2050-aoe.  

INTERDEPENCE OF WILDLIFE

In the model hedge, Pauline O’Dell’s exquisite birds, mice, hedgehogs, moths, flies are shown as not only living in the hedge but being interdependent: pollinators are food for birds, mice are food for owls, hedges are places for birds to build nests and lay their eggs – and the eggs are food for crows. Altogether, hedges are vital to biodiversity. Also, the longer the continuity, the greater the asset.

RESOURCE FOR YOUNGSTERS

Alongside the real hedge on which ours is modelled, there is an ancient oak tree. ‘Olly Oak and the Oak Winter Moth’ tells the story of the critical importance of synchronisation of oak-tree bud-burst, oak winter moth egg hatch and bird mating behaviour – and the possible effect of climate change on this cycle. You can download the story to read, as a video, as a little booklet to print, (and instructions on how to put the booklet together) or as a drama to act out.

MORE RESOURCES FOR YOUNGSTERS

For youngsters and their educators, there are loads more “how to…” ideas,  lesson plans, colouring sheets and suggestions for seasonal activities at Hello Trees resources. In the Exhibition, next to the model hedge and above the ‘Wood Wide Web’ video, is a note about the interdependence of wildlife, of which ‘Olly Oak and the Oak Winter Moth’ is an example. Other examples of interdependence can be found in the Hello Trees resource sheets: Purple Emperor butterflies, goat willows and oak trees; dormice and hedgerows; aphids and lime trees; leaf-miner moth and horse chestnut trees.

UK FOOD STRATEGY AND OUR CHOICES

For more about what you can do most effectively towards mitigating the Climate Change and the Extinction crises, see pages 90-92 of UK Government Food Strategy for England 2021 that show how food (particularly meat/dairy) dominates land use, and thus how diet change might be the best opportunity to enable more trees and thus more carbon capture. The original entire report is here https://www.nationalfoodstrategy.org/the-report/, and a commentary on it (which drew it to our attention) is here https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-will-englands-national-food-strategy-help-tackle-climate-change?utm_campaign=Carbon%20Brief%20Weekly%20Briefing&utm_content=20211022&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20Weekly

SOIL IS EVERYTHING

‘There are more living organisms in a tablespoon of soil than there are people on earth’! What! Throughout the Exhibition, the importance of trees to soil and the importance of soil to just about everything is touched on. For more about the vital links between soil health, trees and just about everything, see It’s alive! Soil is much more than you think | FAO Stories | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Your perception will be changed.