Autumn Newsletter 2022

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A Summer with Chiltern Rangers

River Wye Interpretation Project

Platinum Way Aylesbury Planting Project

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Overview

As I write the newsletter, the news is dominated by the loss of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Like so many of us, we have been reflecting on her incredible reign, 70 years Platinum quality leadership of the country and Commonwealth. She has redefined duty and service and delivered it with a unique blend of grace, humility, love and kindness. We offer our condolences to the Royal family for their loss and she will be deeply missed by us all.

I have been drawn to remember perhaps our proudest work achievement when in June 2017 Chiltern Rangers were awarded The Queens Award For Voluntary Service, the MBE for charities and community organisations. Tony and I were invited to her house in London for tea and a tour of the garden - with 3,000 other people. What an honour.

Thank you Ma’am for everything you have given us. God Save the King.

The summer and start of the autumn have been busy for us despite it being our quiet period! We welcome the three new trainees Izzy, Jack & Jo. You may have seen posts on our Instagram about them. We are delighted to have them on board!

Jack & Izzy are funded through Chalk Cherries and Chairs programme delivered in partnership with Chiltern Conservation Board.

We are looking forward to hosting Be a Ranger sessions with businesses large and small. There is capacity to host more days so please get in touch to book a session. Feedback has been super positive as people have been enjoying giving back to the environment but also being together outdoors as a team after the restrictions of the past 2 years.

We are through this scheme also well on our way to our target of 900 items collected for our partners at One Can Trust

We look forward to seeing you over the coming months as we enjoy the colours of autumn and hopefully a return to more normal weather conditions.

John Shaw

Sowing the seeds to a net carbon zero

Buckinghamshire trees are not only beautiful, fun to climb and very relaxing company, they quietly work extremely hard for us all, removing 180 thousand tonnes of carbon from our county’s air every year.

In recognition of the vital importance of trees in our drive to address climate change, in sustaining ecosystems and in enabling our health and happiness, Wild Pear CIC and Chiltern Rangers CIC created a unique practical and poetic project ‘Sowing the Seeds to a Net Zero Carbon’.

As part of the project, in Autumn 2021, children at Alfriston and Kingswood Schools were taught how to harvest and nurture tree seeds from their local woods. Over the winter, children revisited the woods to explore the hidden life of trees – how they communicate through their root systems, and live together in community – through drawing and animation. As human curiosity was developing above ground, the natural magic was happening under the soil: Hawthorn, Blackthorn, Spindle, Field Maple, Beech and Oak were some of around 100 seeds

Lisa Meaney, Wild Pear CIC

that germinated under the protection of handmade tree cages, and popped up in the spring. These seedlings remain on school grounds or have been gifted out to the community to be nurtured into saplings, with the first cluster lovingly received by St Andrews Church this May.

The project is linked to Bucks Tree Mission – a pledge by Buckinghamshire Council in 2021 to plant a tree for every woman, man and child living here, and support tree planting initiatives through Community Board funding. ‘Sowing the Seeds to a Net Zero Carbon’ is one of these initiatives and was funded by High Wycombe and Beaconsfield & Chepping Wye Community Boards.

With each tree absorbing, on average, one tonne of carbon over its lifetime, and each human adult producing around ten tonnes of carbon a year, trees are one of many important ‘Natural Solutions’ to our carbon problems. Wild Pear and Chiltern Rangers vision is that Bucks Tree Mission might become an even more ambitious, shared council/community endeavour.

The two hundred plus schools in Buckinghamshire, and our countless community groups could nurture tens of thousands of trees and tens of thousands of curious minds, enabling a ‘tree care culture’ to flourish in our county. This would ensure our trees have long and healthy lives that they deserve and we depend on.

How can I get involved?

To find out more about how you can get involved, please email us at lisa@wildpearcic.co.uk or diana@chilternrangers.co.uk. We hope that you will join us in discovering the the hidden life and magic of trees!

New Partnerships

Things never stay still for long at Chiltern Rangers as our social enterprise continues to bloom (apologies for the terrible pun!).

We are delighted to announce that in partnership with Nicholas King Homes, we have just signed a lease to establish a new community wildflower nursery. Located on Hammersley Lane, the site will shortly be made ready for people to help us grow native wildflowers and soft fruits for planting out in the local area. Recipient projects will include NHS community gardens, Wycombe Almshouses, schools including Special Education Needs secondaries and even some of our nature reserves.

We will be working with local groups and schools and Berkshire College of Agriculture students and are very keen to get local people involved to help us nurture these amazing plants. You will even be able to purchase stock from us via open days which we will advertise too.

Please keep an eye on our website and social media for further updates.

If you’d like to register your interest, please drop an email to us: info@chilternrangers.co.uk with your name, contact details and a brief paragraph about your area of interest/expertise and maybe what you’d like to do at this new site.

John Shaw

You can explore the project through an interactive graphic by clicking here.

The furniture industry and woodland management

High Wycombe and the Chilterns have a strong history of furniture making and other wood industry. As long as people have lived in the Chilterns they have used the wood for firewood and building material.

In the 18th century, with the expansion and industrialization of London, the Chilterns became important as a provider of firewood and building materials. This led to a more intensive management of the woods. Coppice coupes –areas of hazel which are cut on a roughly 7-year rotation – were managed to provide firewood, as well as material for making binders for hedge laying, and hurdles. Other trees such as beech, ash and cherry were allowed to mature to provide larger timber.

By the 19th century the demand for firewood fell as coal became more popular. This meant that management of hazel coppice declined. At the same time the furniture industry was developing. The furniture makers favoured beech, felling trees while they were straight and still small enough to handle. Chair legs were turned in the woods by craftsmen we now know as Bodgers. Larger timber was processed by pit sawyers in large saw pits dug into the ground. You can still see evidence of saw pits in woodlands across the Chilterns.

The industry broadened in the early 20th century to produce a variety of furniture as well as chairs, however, after World War 2 the introduction of plywood as well as imported timber from Europe meant the popularity of hand made chairs and furniture declined. As more London companies relocated to High Wycombe, the property price rose, driving many smaller furniture makers out. This meant that the woodlands fell out of management. Some furniture is still made in the Chilterns, however the industry would never be the same again and it would now be economically unviable to manage the woodlands for furniture making.

The decline of management would have had an impact on the wildlife that calls the woodlands home. On the one hand, as coppice coupes were neglected and became overstood, their value as habitat declined, leading to a loss of nesting habitat for birds such as willow warblers. On the other hand, other species of tree such as beech were allowed to grow far larger than they would have under management, allowing them to develop veteran characteristics such as rot holes and dead wood. This benefits hole nesting species such as tawny owl and greater spotted woodpecker, as well as many bats. Standing deadwood provides habitat for a range of insects including beetle larvae, which will in turn feed many other woodland inhabitants.

After a period of abandonment, the woodlands around High Wycombe are now being managed again, not for furniture, but for the benefit of wildlife and the community. At Chiltern Rangers we follow detailed management plans for each of our woodlands, in order to create the best habitats for wildlife. The mature trees remain as great wildlife features, and the coppice coupes are back in active management. We also undertake thinning and scalloping to create varied age structure within the woods, allowing life to thrive both on the ground and in the canopy.

The coppice coupes now provide us with stakes and binders for hedgelaying, and large logs make great seating in forest school areas. We also create woodchip to spread on paths and around planted saplings. While there are currently no resident Bodgers at Chiltern Rangers, many of the team have made fantastic use of wood from our woodlands. I have had a go at pyrography while Ilona used some large logs to make stag beetle stumperies. Dan likes to make walking sticks with hazel coppice, and Jack is adept at milling logs into bench tops!

Kev Mason

Most importantly we only take a small amount of wood. We use most of our wood to create dead hedges which help to form boundaries and deter deer browsing, and which provide brilliant nesting habitat for small birds and mammals. We use bigger logs to create log piles which help fungi and invertebrates to thrive in our woodlands.

Any of our volunteers who come along to our work parties to help with coppicing, felling or scrub clearance are welcome to take a little wood home to use for a project. Maybe you could use it to create a stumpery or log pile in your garden, or maybe you could carve or whittle! Please send us a photo if you make something!

Platinum Way Aylesbury Planting Project - coming soon!

As part of the new Platinum Way shared cycle and footpath improvement project, Buckinghamshire Council is working with Chiltern Rangers and the local community to make the route a haven for wildlife.

We aim to plant over 4000 hedgerow plants, as well as native bulbs and wildflowers over 10 days. So it’s not surprising that we would love some help!

Planting will start on Monday 28th November and run every day until Friday 9th December. Eventbrites will go out with more details of locations nearer the time, but for now please put it in your calendars and take a look at this article using the link below for more information on the initiative!

Clockwise from top: Dan’s walking stick, Ilona’s stumpery, Kev’s pyrography and Jack milling

Ilona Livarski

New Platinum Way cycle route | Buckinghamshire Council

A Summer with Chiltern Rangers

I’ve lived in High Wycombe for over 30 years and have always loved walking in the Chilterns, enjoying the woods and rolling hills in all seasons of the year. I’ve long appreciated the beauty of the woodlands, but in recent years began to recognise that I understood little about them, so perhaps wasn’t really ‘seeing’ them at all.

Around a year ago I began volunteering with Chiltern Rangers on the occasional Saturday, and quickly started to learn more about the value of different habitats and the ways in which careful management can encourage biodiversity.

Over this period I’ve also been studying parttime for an MA in Theology, Ecology and Ethics. This has enabled me to think in depth about the human relationship with nature, and the interconnections and interdependencies that arise.

I’ve come to believe that when people see themselves as part of nature, rather than separate from it, there is the possibility for all to thrive. One of the greatest challenges always seems to be to find ways to enable people to connect with nature in a meaningful way. It’s been genuinely exciting to discover how skilled Chiltern Rangers is at facilitating this kind of connection.

Over the summer months, I’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity for a more concentrated volunteer experience, working 4 days a week with the Rangers, alongside other volunteers who all bring their varied knowledge and experience to the tasks in hand.

After a summer immersed in the Chiltern habitats, I’m now beginning to recognise many more plant and animal species, as well as starting to appreciate the delicate balances and relationships which sustain them. I’m also ‘seeing’ the Chilterns with new eyes and have a renewed sense of belonging in this beautiful landscape.

I’ve seen at first hand how community engagement with conservation enables meaningful nature connections, whether that’s with children in the Forest School programmes, or adults at corporate ‘Be A Ranger’ days.

It’s been a great summer of new challenges and discoveries, with mind and body both feeling well exercised! Just when I was starting to feel disappointment that my ‘volunteer intensive’ was coming to an end, I was offered the opportunity to join the team as a Trainee Ranger. I couldn’t be more delighted to have the chance to work alongside such a knowledgeable and committed group of people, and am looking forward to all the new learning coming my way.

Jo Howard

Jo at work in the Chilterns.

River Wye Interpretation Project: The Story of Our Secret River

Wycombe’s river, the river Wye, is the reason our town exists. Lots of people care about our river and over the years many have dedicated their time to documenting and researching its history, recording snippets of charming tales and recollections of its people, and celebrating those who have fought to protect sections of it. And it’s rare! It’s a chalk stream of which there are fewer than 250 on the entire planet and we have one of our very own in our town! If it’s not literally on our doorsteps, it’s not far.

Telling the complete story of a seemingly incomplete river poses its challenges. Can we design a trail from source to confluence when so much of our river is lost beneath roads and concrete or channelled along manmade tubes beside busy roads? Possibly, yes, but whether that would be a pleasant experience is another thing!

But we are blessed in High Wycombe. Where the river does appear, it is often next to beautiful green spaces and parks – it looks like a real river, an asset for people and wildlife to thrive. A long-held ambition for many in the town is to

celebrate and monumentalise these cherished parts of the river and for people to make the link – yes, it IS the same river that flows past Aldi on the A40 and along the London Road. It IS the same river that looks so lovely as it flows through Desborough Rec, the Rye, Kingsmead, Boundary Park, Wooburn Park, Bourne End Rec and through to meet the Thames.

These places should (and most often are) celebrated and loved by local people and so the project to create one linked up ‘trail’ is underway with the help of multiple funders including the Heritage Lottery and our Chalk, Cherries and Chairs project. Nine boards in total will be installed at key sites from West Wycombe to Bourne End with the help of many from our community contributing to the content. A downloadable leaflet is also being created and the hope is we spark more of an interest in our river, our heritage but also the river’s future. The river Wye is a gift that we should all hold dear and help look after for ourselves and for the wildlife who have made the Wye their home.

Steph Rodgers

A Summer of Wildlife

When the year-long Chilterns New Shoots programme, which I had been lucky enough to take part in the first ever cohort of, came to its official conclusion in March, I was left feeling somewhat bereft, to say the least.

The programme had given me a fantastic introduction into the fascinating worlds of wildlife identification and surveying, ecology and conservation, and was something I massively enjoyed being a part of. However, thanks to the generous offer of extra bursary funding to support New Shoots members in other projects, it turned out to be far from the end, and instead, more like the beginning of something new.

I applied for two grants from the bursary: one for transport to allow me to carry out a week of work experience with Chiltern Rangers, and another for a Field Studies Council (FSC) Young Darwin Scholarship at their flagship centre in Shropshire.

The work experience took place a couple of weeks after I had finished my last GCSE exam, and

Freddie Emms, New Shoots and Work Experience Student

had officially broken up for the long summer of Year 11-12. On the first day I was lucky enough to join the Rangers on a team day out to Knepp Estate in Sussex, where I was overjoyed to see some of the keystone species there for the first time, including the majestic storks as well as a fleeting glimpse of a purple emperor butterfly near the end of the day.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent in Chalfont St. Giles digging shallow channels around trees to fill with wood chip, in an attempt to protect them from strimmers and mowers that had been slowly chipping off their bark. The feeling of satisfaction at not only the aesthetic value of the finished job, but also the knowledge of really making a difference in this small way of protecting these young trees was, and for me continues to be, the factor that renders me so enthusiastic at the thought of a conservation-related career.

After helping out on ‘Green Thursday’ at Chairborough, and at Gomm’s Wood on Friday, doing intensive litter picks and pathway

management, I left my week of work experience having thoroughly enjoyed it and feeling enthused to come back to Chiltern Rangers more often as a volunteer.

I had also been lucky enough to discover this summer I had successfully gained a Young Darwin Scholarship, a programme run by the FSC for young people to learn about a wide range of ecological topics, from identification and surveying, to how to successfully achieve a career in the sector. It began with a week-long immersive course at the Preston Montford field centre in Shropshire in the first week of August, on which I had the opportunity to meet various experienced FSC staff members and tutors as well as a number of new, like-minded friends, and to participate in a variety of classroom and field-based workshops.

The first day encompassed an introduction to the wildlife and ecology of the site followed by an evening bat talk and survey of the bat roost in one of the centre’s buildings, while Tuesday brought a focus on invertebrates. We learnt to use AIDGAP (Aid to Identification of Difficult Groups of Animals and Plants) guides to identify

them under a microscope to order level, and gained practical experience of the different types of invertebrate sampling techniques. The evening and subsequent morning were spent on learning to survey small mammals using mammal traps, which we set overnight. Despite the traps only turning out a sole field vole, much was learnt about the survey techniques and ecology of small mammals.

A botany field trip on the third day took us to Llanymynech Rocks on the border of Wales and England, where we identified and surveyed a wide range of calcareous grassland plants using quadrats, and where an informal reptile survey turned out another highlight species of the week: a slow worm basking under a rock. Back at the field centre, our tutor for the day took us around the grounds on a tree walk, learning to identify and distinguish between both common trees and shrubs, as well as a selection of rarer ones.

On Thursday, we had the opportunity to visit a local Shropshire lead mine, where we learnt about local history and geology, before hiking over the unique heathland habitat of the Stiperstones, studying the specific heathland species and their ecology and conservation, stopping along the way for a talk from the chief ranger of this important reserve, as well as a couple of local folklore tales. On the morning of our final day of the scholarship, we took part in a last classroom-based workshop on science communications, careers and next steps, which I found to be especially useful in informing us of the different available career paths in the diverse and vastly-growing conservation sector.

In all, the scholarship brought me into contact with other like-minded individuals from all over the country in a fantastic experience on which we not only learnt a great amount, but also massively enjoyed, and with the promise of ongoing support and subsidies from both the FSC and New Shoots, I am left with a great sense of excitement and anticipation as to what will be the next steps in my conservation journey.

Volunteer of the Season Awards

It’s been a brilliant summer at Chiltern Rangers! We’ve been able to fly through our chalk grassland management thanks to our wonderful volunteers and successful corporate sessions. Before we move onto the Autumn season, we want to celebrate some stand out volunteers for us this season.

Volunteer of the Summer Season – Jo Howard

Our volunteer of the summer season goes to Jo Howard! Jo started volunteering with us over the summer for 4 days a week for 2 months. Jo is studying a Masters Degree in Theology, Ecology and Ethics and wanted to get a better understanding of our local ecology so decided to volunteer with us. She’s been a brilliant addition to Chiltern Rangers through her volunteering, so much so that she was offered a traineeship with us! Thank you for your hard work and enthusiasm, Jo!

Green Thursday Volunteer of the Summer Season – Brian Gibbons

Our wonderful volunteer Brian Gibbons has won our Green Thursday Summer award! Brian has been volunteering with us for approximately 9 years and comes week in week out, no matter the weather! He is our champion litter picker; always bringing back 3 times as much litter back as we expect to find! He gets involved with other tasks too, always with a smile. Thank you for your dedication, care and your uplifting energy Brian!

Work Experience Student of the Summer – Jacob Dawson

We have introduced a work experience student of the summer award this year as we were really impressed with how Jacob developed with us over the season. Jacob spent one day a week with us over the summer, and at first Jacob needed a fair bit of supervision and motivation to work throughout the day. By the end of his placement, Jacob had developed independence and his own motivation and we had no worries about him working hard throughout the day. Well done Jacob, keep it up!

Well done to our volunteers who have won awards this season, but also thank you to each and every volunteer who has come and helped us this summer! The summer for us is a time of keeping our sites clean and tidy (through litter picking and path maintenance) and the latter half of the summer involves chalk grassland management (raking the cut grass to encourage more wild flower growth next year). All of these tasks are very labour intensive and so we are incredibly grateful to everyone who comes and helps!

Ilona Livarski

From all of us at Chiltern Rangers...

Have an amazing autumn! We hope you have enjoyed this edition of the newsletter and a big thank you for continuing to follow and support us.

If you would like further information about any of the articles in this issue, please contact us: email: info@chilternrangers.co.uk call: 01494 474 486

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