Calcareous grassland restoration

[Lee Winger]

Interesting work Matt, do you work to a consultant/ecologists spec?

[mrtree]

Why not mow and burn? Seems alot faster than hand work? Or at least fell with F550 and then push up into piles with a tractor.

[Xaltu]

Matt, are any of the sites grazed?

[Matthew Arnold]

Interesting work Matt, do you work to a consultant/ecologists spec?

 

We work on the ecologist spec as it is easier to follow. E.g. Year 1 - Remove Gorse. Year 2 - Control Gorse. Year 3 - same as year 2, etc,etc,etc

[Matthew Arnold]

Why not mow and burn? Seems alot faster than hand work? Or at least fell with F550 and then push up into piles with a tractor.

 

We brushcut it a couple of years ago and raked it into big heaps and had a big burning sesh. The slope is too steep even for a lil compact tractor.

[ecolojim]

We brushcut it a couple of years ago and raked it into big heaps and had a big burning sesh. The slope is too steep even for a lil compact tractor.

 

Interesting point. I cant say for sure cos ive not seen it but with what I drive daily during the summer that looks only half as steep as our floodbanks

 

You say you do some hand in hand work with the local EA depot?

Do they have an Aebi/Metrac, whatever?

 

Edited March 11, 2011 by ecolojim

[Matthew Arnold]

Yep we occasionally work with EA. We've seen there tracked piece of kit at work and its brilliant. Trouble is the site were have been working on its covered in massive pieces of flint. So the flail hammers would be destroyed in seconds.

[Matthew Arnold]

This is the beast that we use to do most of our mowing. It has interchangeable decks. We have a lawn deck and a rough deck.

[odd_bird]

interesting how different is everyone's approach to mowing. :001_smile:We use BCS on our sites as it imitates the grazing more accurately and gives little creatures a chance to escape. It is time and labor consuming though...We were thinking of hiring the alpine tractor for very steep slopes but a bunch of young volunteers armed with lopers did the job just as well and didn't cost us any money

will try to get some pictures tomorrow

[odd_bird]

pictures from today..job finished! Shame I didn't take any pictures prior to this.