Welcome! This blogspot gives you the chance to have your say as part of the 5 Year Review of the Sefton Coast Woodlands Forest Plan. To aid this process, please keep all discussion focused on the 5 Year Review. Any inappropriate or abusive posts will be removed.
Site moderator: admin@merseyforest.org.ukA bracket fungus on deadwood:
Activities:
Squirrel dreys and bat roosts have been retained.
Operations have been halted during breeding seasons.
Thinning has been undertaken to improve light penetration for wildflowers.
Chemical treatment has been carried out to reduce invasive species, such as Japanese knot weed, on a number of properties.
An active grey squirrel capture programme has been put in place.
Where public access allows (in remote and private parts of the woodlands), deadwood has been retained to provide habitat for insects and other wildlife.
Specific habitats have been created including scrub being cleared from heath and around slacks to restore habitats, nesting boxes being installed at appropriate sites and wet areas being managed for wet woodland, meadow and reed beds.
A question for you:
The woodlands are a habitat as well as a landscape and there is a need to manage the structure to encourage desirable species and protect the habitats from invasion by undesirable species. Many people, including volunteers from the public, have been involved in this diverse range of activities – do you feel that we are doing enough to encourage desirable species?
3 comments:
Red squirrels and bats are mentioned in this section. These are not dune species.
No dune specialist species are mentioned anywhere in this review - in this section or any other.
Given that the dune habitats are the most important habitats on the coast this is surely a problem.
In answer to your question, therefore, I would ask what you are doing for dune species.
In response to the question asked within the comment, this is a Woodland Plan and will look at all habitats within woodlands, which inevitably includes woodland species. A number of landowners are managing their woodlands for the patchwork of habitats and are encouraging open dune and dune heath species on woodland edges, within slacks, on rides and within felling coupes. The brief description of achievements within the blog highlights only a few achievements, it cannot list everything that the 20 active landowners and site managers are doing.
With careful management it is likely that the biodiversity value of the woodlands will increase over time as soils develop and more deadwood is left. There is a challenge to develop a seamless landscape between dunes and woods but this may be difficult given the current target for pine wood. If one looks at the aerial photographs of the 1960s there is a sharp contrast between the very obvious plantations (no doubt rabbit-fenced) and the open dunes where high numbers of rabbits had maintained a low sward. Following myxomatosis there was a rapid increase in scrub development which has now resulted in new areas of deciduous woodland.
Wildlife would benefit from a gradation of scrub into deciduous woodland and large open clearings for the development of dune heath and around slacks (tree cover has to be kept back from the slacks).
In terms of current activity there should be more reporting on the specific wildlife value of woodland actions. How many bird and bat boxes are put up -what is their success? Is there a strategic approach?
Which species have been selected as indicator species and how do we monitor and report on them?
Post a Comment