An Idiot's guide to Ancient Woodland management

[Woodsman1967]

5 hours ago, Lucan said:

 

If you want some bedtime reading on the biodiversity value of sycamore in UK woodlands: The ecology and biodiversity value of sycamore (acer pseudoplatanus L) with particular reference to Great Britain

 

This is a really interesting read , there's a area of the wood I'm working in that I believe was once mainly elm (all long since gone ) which has now been taken over by mostly sycamore which is slowly spreading into more of the wood . Given that most of the wood is predominantly ash , which is now about to suffer a similar fate to the elm , I'm happy to let it spread further and hopefully increase the biodiversity in the wood .

 

[Stubby]

I am in the sycamore liking camp .  In a few years everyone will be saying thank fuck or it .  Some nice rippled timber on a mill , fairly strong structurally , fast seasoning , easy split , burns well yada yada yade Whats not to like ? 

[Bolt]

13 hours ago, Stubby said:

I am in the sycamore liking camp .  In a few years everyone will be saying thank fuck or it .  Some nice rippled timber on a mill , fairly strong structurally , fast seasoning , easy split , burns well yada yada yade Whats not to like ? 

.....and (from memory) very handy during the summer if you need to feed your mothers goats in a hurry.

[Bolt]

A chap called Alan at Lynher Training in Cornwall had a Lucas Mill.

 

All the workbenches in their training room were made from sycamore (IIRC) that they had milled themselves.

 

Pretty nice looking timber for use in that type of application as I remember.

[the village idiot]

WIDE RIDENING III. THE DIFFICULT DECISION.

 

You may remember from way back in the thread that Steve and I had put three years into massively opening up the ride network in the Wood.

 

 

This was the precursor to encouraging a three zone growth structure, going from grass, through herby and shrubby growth, to the mature trees at the back of the ride edge.

 

All was going swimmingly, and the ride edge felling had yielded several hundred tons of firewood grade material which was the revenue stream keeping me in scotch eggs and Um Bongo.

 

Always lurking in the back of my mind though was the thought of how difficult it was going to be to maintain the ride edge mowing regime with the thousands of stumps (some of them huge) littering both sides of the newly opened rides.

 

 

Neither tractors nor mowers like stumps, and we had far too many miles of ride edge to maintain to entertain brushcutters. A tractor mounted hedging flail was a potential option but this too would have been slow and we didn't have the right equipment. Same scenario with a stump grinder.

 

As far back as 2016 we had started to mull over the possibility of a large tracked mulcher. It was a scary prospect as this is a very big, expensive and powerful machine. It would be more than capable of dealing with our stump problem, but was it too much of a beast to unleash in an Ancient Woodland?

 

We put the decision on the backburner, but by the Spring of this year the ride edges were beginning to grow up, the stumps were getting lost in the undergrowth and we had to decide on a course of action.

 

I spent a long time researching mulching on sensitive sites. There wasn't a great deal of information out there. The only ancient woodland site I could find reference to at the time that had dared bring a big mulcher in was Blean Woods in Kent.

 

Blean Wood is a stunning ancient woodland owned and managed by the RSPB. It is a SSSI (site of special scientific interest) which means it needs permission from Natural England to perform many of the standard management practices.

 

The fact that a SSSI had decided to go down the mulching route made me a bit more relaxed about it being an option for our Wood. Raydon is not a SSSI but arguably it should be.

 

We decided to pack up our Thermos' and travel down to Kent to see first hand what impact the ride edge mulching had had there. We were very pleasantly surprised. We took our woody friend Pete Fordham with us, as when you get as old as him you need a few nice outings.

 

We were met at the Wood by Sam, the woodland warden for Blean. Unfortunately for him he had managed to glue his fingertips together the previous evening which made gesticulating rather difficult.

 

 

 

The mulched ride edges within the Wood looked superb. The next picture shows the regeneration during the first growing season:

 

 

The next picture shows a typical ride edge at Blean 2-3 years after mulching:

 

 

The picture above is a great example of exactly the type of ride edge profile we are aiming for. You can't see them in the picture, but this strip was buzzing with Bees, Hoverflies and Butterflies. Two years previously it had all been mulched down to nothing.

 

After a very pleasant guided stroll we left Kent with a definite sense that mulching could indeed be a very good option for us. It was going to break a few eggs at the time, but hopefully produce a hugely satisfying and ecologically interesting woody omelette in the long run.

 

Next up. The Mulcher!

 

 

[roys]

Top thread VI, enjoying the read. Thank you for the effort in writing this and doing the work of course.

Downside is that it makes me feel like I am only playing at managing my woods, although my work mainly consists of cutting back acres of rhododendron and dealing with the wind fall trees for my wood burner.

 

[the village idiot]

3 minutes ago, roys said:

Top thread VI, enjoying the read. Thank you for the effort in writing this and doing the work of course.

Downside is that it makes me feel like I am only playing at managing my woods, although my work mainly consists of cutting back acres of rhododendron and dealing with the wind fall trees for my wood burner.

 

Thanks roys,

 

The amount of work we are doing is purely down to the specific circumstances in this Wood. It is pretty big so can easily 'soak up' large interventions, and our main focus has been the intensive job of opening it back up after decades of neglect and unfortunate plantings. It is also our day job, so need to show that things are getting done.

 

Other Woodlands will have different requirements and a lighter touch will be more appropriate. We ourselves will soon be moving into a long lasting phase of more delicate operations, concentrating more on habitat creation and maintenance.

 

Taking out Rhododendron is a critical exercise, and if we had lot's of it here, that's what we would be doing too.

[Gary Prentice]

45 minutes ago, the village idiot said:

Raydon is not a SSSI but arguably it should be.

How does the SSSI thing work? If the powers to be decide your wood fulfils the criteria, is it a done deal and then you are saddled with all the bureaucracy that it then entails?

 

I'm asking because within the TPO legislation, the LA can decide that because trees are under good management, broadly along the same lines and objectives as the authorities own, they don't get involved unless the situation changes and the trees become threatened. 

[the village idiot]

1 minute ago, Gary Prentice said:

How does the SSSI thing work? If the powers to be decide your wood fulfils the criteria, is it a done deal and then you are saddled with all the bureaucracy that it then entails?

Yes, this is pretty much the case. Being designated a SSSI woodland can be somewhat of a mixed blessing. It is a helpful extra layer of protection against bad management/development, but it can also create a frustrating amount of extra permission gaining.

 

The SSSI tag does not necessarily totally protect irreplaceable ancient woodland habitat. Currently there are (according to the Woodland Trust) over 1000 ancient woodland sites, many of them SSSI's under threat from development projects such as HS2.

 

I think that most of the SSSI designations were appointed quite some time ago. I don't think new ones come onto the books very often. Natural England have faced cutbacks just like every other govt. department and they just don't have the resources to do the necessary surveying.

 

I haven't ever heard of any woodland losing it's SSSI status, but presumably this can happen under terrible management or very long term neglect.

 

[Gary Prentice]

2 minutes ago, the village idiot said:

It is a helpful extra layer of protection against bad management/development, but it can also create a frustrating amount of extra permission gaining.

Are there any benefits at all? 

 

I'm curious. In 'your' wood it sounds that your aims and objectives are all to the good and a SSSI designation would appear to be a handicap rather than an asset.