Improving Habitats and Stag Beetles

While I know that some of my readers (Well I have two cats and a human that reads this) don't like me posting on political issues, they would rather I just posted on wildlife and Environment topics, but Zimbabwe is an environmental issue. To put the situation in context, my ex wife went to Zimbabwe on a School trip, in my school the best we got was a visit to the Natural History Museum, the year of their first anniversary of their independence. What she brought back was the very real feeling of hope the people had. Additionally, the country really did think that it could help feed Africa. While we now know that hope was dashed and the bread basket for the region is now facing the worst harvest for sixty years, the environmental impact of this will seriously effect the ecosystems in the region. Desperate hungry people will kill the wildlife to eat, and if crops are poor, more wild land is taken to try to grow crops.

Therefore, the environmental impact of injustice and human rights start to become obvious, so I feel justified in posting on that topic.

Anyway, back to the wildlife. On Monday, I went to visit a private wood for the owners. It all started a couple of weeks ago when I had a telephone call form someone I did not know. The call was memorable as the gentleman that called did not even know my name, and I thought it was rather fishy. Was it someone trying to sell me something? Or was it someone trying to garner my personal details? In the end I told my caller that he had to tell me the purpose of his call or I was going to hang up. It turned out that someone else had given him my number as they were looking for some help with declining wildlife in their wood.

I don't know how or why, but I seem to have earned a reputation.

What had sparked their concern was that when they had bought the wood some ten years back, they had quite a good population of birds, insects and wildlife in general. But they had noticed a decline in the birds last year and even fewer this year.

So they had contacted various people to see where they could get help from and it turns out that a former landlady had given them my number. They, the owners, had bought the wood to provide free wood fuel for the folks in the syndicate. But also they loved having the wood as a place to walk their dogs and to have gatherings, parties and barbecues.

Anyway, I had to travel to Durham to meet the to guys who were going to show me their woods. Their forest looked fine as we approached but as we walked into the woods, it struck me that there was no dead wood at all. Also, the normal under brush was missing.

What they have been doing is collecting all the fallen and dead wood for fire wood and by not leaving any for the insects, they were removing the food for the birds. Also they have been spraying brushwood killer to get rid of much of the brambles and such like, again this has removed much of the natural habitat the wildlife needs. Brambles are important as they provide cover and food for a lot of wildlife. It turned out that there had been strong disagreements about much of what they had been doing, so much of what I suggested was what they had already realised they needed to do.

What they also needed was guidance on how to harvest the wood so they were not cutting down all the trees. So I suggested coppicing some of the trees, I even ended up marking the trees for them, and it looks as though I will be going back to show them how to coppice in the autumn.
It is a shame that they hadn't sought better advice when they first bought the wood, as they do have a lovely setting. By buying their local wood they have ensured that the wood will stay. Also by utilising the wood in a sustainable way for their fire wood, the fifteen acres provides fire wood for more than twenty households, so while it was never intended to be a green project, this is what it has become.

Further, while I did not see any this time, they did have Lesser Stag Beetles their when they first obtained the wood, and if they haven't destroyed all the dead wood they could return. Its an insect that I would love to see. I have permission to return too at any time, so I left them with instructions that they have to improve the habitat so that I can come back to get pictures of the wildlife.