Chair’s update – October 2021
Rebecca Pow and John Greenshields at the celebration to mark the completion of Wellington Monument’s renovation.
Autumn and foraging go well together, certainly the squirrels planting a new hazel copse in our garden seem to think so. There is an abundance of sloes in the hedgerows a lovely reminder of the sloe gin sitting in our sideboard, something to look forward to when winter appears round the corner. There is, as always, a lot to enjoy in the Blackdown Hills and I’m pleased to share with you some of my highlights over the last few weeks. The Wellington Monument has featured prominently (pun intended) firstly with a small celebration at the Monument to formally announce the completion of the amazing restoration work brought alive by a brief overview from the responsible NT engineering manager. It was great to meet and hear Hilary McGrady, Director General of the National Trust, expressing her delight at what has been achieved, and our local MP Rebecca Pow who managed to secure a magnificent £1m of funding from the LIBOR fund generated by the fines from that scandal. Best of all I was delighted to witness the presentation made to my vice chair John Greenshields in recognition of his outstanding support throughout the restoration.
A subsequent event at the Wellington Monument was the picnic arranged by our volunteer coordinator Verity Jones a thank you to our volunteers for all their efforts throughout the year. Unfortunately, only a few folk were available to attend but rest assured I did my best to tuck in to the excellent spread that Verity had organised. It was good to meet up with a couple of regular ‘work mates’ from crayfish surveying days and some new friends who have recently joined as volunteers working on water quality citizen science activities and helping to clearing the massively invasive Himalayan Balsam that we suffer from. I hope at a future event to be able to see more of you and thank you for all that you do.
I was pleased to lend a hand on some more crayfish related activity, this time building some gabions and helping place them in a pond which is designated as an ‘ark site’ for the reintroduction of the native species. The idea is that the gabions rest on the bottom of the pond to provide an elevated refuge for young crayfish away from bottom dwelling predators such as dragon fly larvae. James Maben, one of the leads in this work, developed an ingenious approach to delivering the very heavy gabions by loading them on to his kayak on shore and then using a small boat to pull them in to the middle of the pond to offload them. Super effective method and ’to be patented’. Breaking news, it is planned to release some native crayfish into the pond in early October, these have been raised with the assistance of Paignton and Bristol Zoos. This will be a major milestone in the ongoing efforts to support the native species.
Less strenuous was a most enjoyable stroll round the Mount Fancy Butterfly Conservation Reserve. This was a first for me in all respects and I found it to be a wonderful environment thanks to the dedicated attention of volunteers, not least Tony and Anna Spiess who were our guides for the visit. Tony describes himself as the hands-on guy who organises and is himself involved in clearing bracken, hazel growth, etc to maintain the essential glades. Whilst Anna majors on species identification and reporting, a great combination and we were fortunate to see quite a few species during our visit. Amusingly we saw the most abundant collection of species that morning when we returned to our car which was parked next to a buddleia.
Our flagship projects that you will read more about in the AONB newsletter are maintaining and building momentum now that we are all able to move about more freely. I’m closely involved with the Connecting the Culm project and from a personal perspective it’s good to see how it is collaborating with another watery interest of mine, the Grand Western Canal, for which I’m a trustee of the Friends of the Grand Western Canal organisation. Please excuse this blatant plug for another excellent organisation that thrives on volunteer support.
Wishing you all an enjoyable Autumn and I hope that for you this will include the opportunity to get out and about in the Hills.
