Habitat piles?

[Ratman]

Not these days mate.

??? know the feeling some days [emoji30][emoji42][emoji42]

[westphalian]

What is it?? 10% of wood in a wood should be dead and left to rot. Sure I heard/read somewhere. The wood I’m thinning I chip/burn the conifer foliage, plank the stems, log the remaining stem from about 8-4 inches and leave the rest. Oh, I leave the stumps high to piss off pedants and give squirrels a viewing spot [emoji6]

[Sheepy]

There a fucking brilliant way to avoid clearing up if you can get away with it! They do genuinely work too, couple managed woods I’ve worked in have had absolutely everything left in habitat piles, the amount of flies and birds and all sorts kicking off is incredible.

[Yorkshire Brummie]

Yep log piles are the business and anyone who knows what they're talking about gives top points for having one.
Stag beetle numbers have dropped by 90% over recent years and mostly because they spend most of their life in the larval stage in rotting wood and too much rotting wood has been tidied up off the forest floor. I moved one back a bit recently as it had been stacked by the side of a pond-side path and we wanted to enbigenate the path.
Slow worms and newts is what we found.
 
I was once sitting having a bite and a cup of tea when I saw a stag beetle fly in low and crash into an oak tree right by where I was sitting.
That's odd I thought; y'don't see that everyday.
Anyway the stag beetle got up and crashed back into the tree again and again and then down into the leaf litter. And there was the explanation: A female stag beetle up for a bit of action! There was a lipstick like projection out from the back of her abdomen which I imagine was wafting get-it-here pheromones on the breeze - single molecules - and the male stag beetle followed the trail up wind and was guided purely by receptors rather than sight.
 
Someone came along to help recently.
Yep. The first thing they did was burn up all my old log piles and all my stag beetle larvae cos they thought they looked untidy.
 
tldr: log piles good cos stag beetles.
 
Happy Days
Yourn
 

This is the very reason I’ve begun to try and cherry pick nature loving clientele in the domestic garden work we do. An absurdly higher number of people (regardless of the size of their properties) seem to crave “sterile/clean” gardens bereft of any leaf/habitat piles, hardstanding areas glysophated till it perfumes the air and planting resembling telly tubby land.
Do you think if we could monetise habitat creation, it would create a greater understanding of ecological balances in people’s/public properties thus addressing climate change and further to that highlighting the value to clientele of using bonafide/knowledgable Arborists?
Cheers
I

[felixthelogchopper]

On 10/10/2018 at 18:43, stihlmadasever said:

Piles of worn Y fronts dont count mate

Not even if they contain plenty of 'mulch'?

[felixthelogchopper]

On 10/10/2018 at 21:51, westphalian said:

What is it?? 10% of wood in a wood should be dead and left to rot. Sure I heard/read somewhere. The wood I’m thinning I chip/burn the conifer foliage, plank the stems, log the remaining stem from about 8-4 inches and leave the rest. Oh, I leave the stumps high to piss off pedants and give squirrels a viewing spot

It does make them easier to slot. ?

[Ratman]

Not even if they contain plenty of 'mulch'?

Eww! [emoji37] dirty boy!!!

[struie]

On 10/10/2018 at 18:31, Stubby said:

Some times my lounge looks like a habitat pile ......

Hello Brother!!!

[The avantgardener]

I have a quite large document downloaded from the FC website pertaining to the high value of dead wood as habitat, it discusses the value and ratio of standing dead, dead on the floor and dead lying in streams that is beneficial for wildlife, check the website.

I had a similar knobhead talking bollocks to me last week. I had just finished clear felling 300 tonne of non native Western Hemlock, Lawson Cypress and Silver/Grand Fir, all massively fast grown, the Fir was 4’ at the butt, 45m tall and only 50 years old. The idea is to replant with native hardwoods, enter knobhead who used to work for the ‘Trust’. I tell him the plan and he replies, “that is such a cliche”, I asked him to explain what he meant but he couldn’t as it was just something he had heard banding around the office and something he repeated as often as possible to sound  like he knew what he was talking about.

[spandit]

Managed to actually ask said neighbour as to what he meant. He reckons because we live in the countryside there is enough habitat around already and making some deliberate piles wasn't necessary. I disagree - my land is largely unmanaged but without the log piles, it's just grassland which is valuable for nature but limited in biodiversity.