SUMMER 2022 Urban Conservation Myth Busting Spring Cuts Saffron House Mental Health Hub Garden Ground Force Forces for Nature, Sir Thomas Fremantle School Stepping Stones Sands Bank Butterfly Transect Kingsmead Volunteer Group
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Welcome to our Summer newsletter Urban Conservation Myth Busting
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Spring Cuts
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Saffron House Mental Health Hub Garden
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Forces for Nature, Sir Thomas Fremantle School
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Stepping Stones
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Sands Bank Butterfly Transect
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Kingsmead Volunteer Group
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Urban Conservation Myth Busting At Chiltern Rangers, our work involves looking after both urban and rural green spaces, from chalk streams to woodlands and parks. We want these places to be part of the fabric of our community. We – and our amazing volunteers – work hard to make them richer in wildlife and nicer places to explore and discover. To tackle the climate and biodiversity crises, we need everyone to come together to help. I believe there are five misunderstandings which are stopping us from doing the very best we can for the nature around us. These are:
Planting trees is the only solution
Some people will tell you that the world will be saved if we all plant lots of trees. This is only part of the story. What they usually forget is that the trees have to be the right species, in the right places, planted for the right reasons. Ideally they should be grown from local seed and grown nearby. 4
John Shaw
Cutting down trees is always bad
It’s really important that the woodland we have now is properly looked after. Often this means cutting trees down! This is called coppicing and thinning and it’s how our woodlands and the wildlife that depends upon them has evolved over the past 10,000 years. Trees will regrow and regenerate – we just have to be patient. We also need to control the pests which threaten the health of our woods, new and old. This can be an unpopular thought but all sorts of problems can be caused by grey squirrel, glis glis (aka the edible dormouse) and deer, especially muntjac, roe and fallow.
Litter is a problem of the past
As a ranger, I know this is simply not true. There is so much littering and fly tipping that it rivals football as a national pastime. If my team could change one thing, it would be this: no more littering. Plastics are a huge problem as they break down – micro plastics are now present in our water, our food and even our blood.
All flowers are good for bees and butterflies
The best kinds of wildflower meadows are not just eye-catching displays of poppies, corn marigold and cornflower. They should also be rich biodiverse places, full of often-overlooked plants like bird’s foot trefoil. This plant provides nectar and pollen for bees and butterflies, and its leaves are important food for caterpillars.
I can’t make a difference
This is the most dangerous myth. If everyone does what they can then yes, we can make a difference. Why not: • plant a pot on your windowsill for pollinators • grow a native shrub like hawthorn in your garden • buy local plants and trees where you can • join a local group to give back to the environment – even a few hours one day a month will help • take photos and use recording apps: share the nature you love via social media We need to come together to make and be the difference that we need to see.
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Spring Cuts If you have been out on some of our reserves this spring you may have noticed that we have cut the grasslands in the springtime. This can cause some concern among passers by who are worried that the wildflowers will suffer as a result of our actions, but the truth is the exact opposite. One reserve we have carried out a spring cut on is Tom Burt’s hill. The ‘Cowslip field’ as it is known was becoming very grass dominated and overgrown, and due to its size and the challenges of the pandemic, had not been fully cut for quite a while. This had allowed the nutrients to build up over time, favouring the dominant grasses. In an ideal world we would graze all our grasslands with cattle or sheep. There are several benefits of grazing. The vegetation is kept low and nutrients removed, favouring wildflowers over grasses, and as livestock don’t graze everywhere evenly, they help to further increase the diversity of plant species present. The animal’s hooves break up the ground creating bare patches where seeds can establish, and the dung they leave behind supports a host of insect species such as dung beetles. Unfortunately, due to our reserve’s 6
Cowslips in bloom at Tom Burt’s hill.
Kev Mason urban locations, grazing with livestock would not be practical so cutting and raking is the next best thing. Spring cuts have to be timed carefully. Too early and the vegetation won’t have grown much since the previous cut at the end of summer. Too late and there is a risk of knocking back the wildflowers too much, which could affect how well they can grow, flower and set seed over the summer. We did our spring cuts in April through to early May, though this can vary with weather conditions. On the 4th of April we commenced our assault on the cowslip field. Four rangers, accompanied by four volunteers fought hard for two long days, cutting 4500m2 of grassland, and finally we had the grass beaten. Our trustworthy Green Thursday volunteers made light work of the raking. To the untrained eye our work may have looked harsh but it didn’t take long to see the benefits. Only a couple of weeks after the cut, the cowslips came out in force! They were surviving beneath the rank grass, but once we let the light get to them, they seized their chance to flower.
Following the cut, we enlisted an ally in order to keep the grass in check. Yellow rattle is named because its flowers are yellow and its seed pods rattle. It is semi-parasitic, stealing nutrients from the roots of grasses, weakening them in the process. We planted yellow rattle in an exclosure on cowslip field to keep it protected while it gets established, so that hopefully it will set seed and spread. It won’t be long before we will be able to see how our work has benefitted the wildflowers at Tom Burt’s hill. Our fingers are crossed that the wildflowers will flourish this summer! However, as with all our grasslands, we will need to repeat the process again at the end of the summer, and if needed, next spring. If you want to be involved in this important process then keep an eye on our volunteer days from August onwards. In the meantime, there are plenty of other jobs that we could do with your help on! Above: A bumblebee on yellow rattle. Below: Tom Burt’s hill after a fresh cut.
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Saffron House Mental Health Hub Garden Ground Force This was garden number four that we have designed and built in partnership with the Oxford Health Charity. Ranger Paul, Dan and Ranger Artist in Residence Dan Wilson were supported by NHS staff, Article 12 Youth Forum (some of the young people have helped at every garden) and our volunteers. As ever, great team work with people of all ages supporting each other and creating something very beautiful. Behind the scenes our amazing gardener volunteer Sue Louttit had grown us a truck full of plants and Reece from Dickinson Tree Company delivered a huge load of woodchip. Just as we put up the holly blue artboard a holly blue flew in (pictured) and we received this feedback from a member of the Saffron House staff team: 8
Paul Stack
“I just wanted to drop a quick email of gratitude for the outdoor space, that the Chiltern Ranger team and the staff have been working on over the last few days. “They have done an absolutely fab job, and it looks so lovely outside now. I have just sat on one of the benches out the front, and enjoyed a cup of coffee in the sunshine for a few minutes, and it has been a real treat, to have such a lovely place to take a few minutes to relax during the busy working day.” The perfect end to a great few days. We have more wildlife garden projects in the pipeline and will be back to keep Saffron House sparkling. Ranger Paul would love to hear from you if you would like to support us with these special projects.
From top: Getting started on the project; Finishing the Holly blue mural; The final result! Facing page: The painting team at work; A holly blue butterfly visits the garden.
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Forces for Nature, Sir Thomas Fremantle School Over the last year Ranger Steph has been working hard to deliver the Forces for Nature project. Funding was secured from The Armed Forces Covenant Trust, in 2021, with the aim of bringing members of the armed forces together with the community. Sessions have included path improvements at Bradenham Woods where RAF personnel worked with pupils from Naphill and Walter’s Ash School. Recruits from RAF Halton also joined the Big Biodiversity Battle in Chalfont St Peter’s, Sea Cadets worked on Kingsmead and personnel from St George’s Barracks joined the conservation work at MOD Bicester. Our most recent session with the Armed Forces was on 24th May, where RAF Halton recruits and Chiltern Rangers volunteers ventured to Sir Thomas Fremantle School in Winslow. The brief was simple; give some much needed TLC to the school’s wildlife/allotment area. The tasks were plentiful; install post and rail fencing, brushcut and rake the newly created path, create compost bins with old pallets, plant flower bulbs inside car tyres lining the path, and chip old brash. It was also exam season at the school, so we could only use the machinery at certain times! 10
Ilona Livarski
The volunteers and recruits worked so hard over the day that there was even time for them to start digging a pond! At 15:30 the cadets from the school joined the session, and worked, with the recruits and volunteers, over the next hour to plant wildflowers, weed the allotment beds and move soil from one area to another. It was great to see the cadets not only working hard to benefit wildlife, but also to see them chatting to the recruits about their experience in the RAF. Overall the volunteers spent six and a half hours on site and made a huge difference to the school’s wildlife/allotment area. Thank you to RAF Halton, Chiltern Rangers volunteers, Sir Thomas Fremantle School Cadets and staff for coming together to make a huge difference. The group’s enthusiasm and hard work made a long day, a fun and rewarding day! Thank you to The Armed Forces Covenant Trust for funding the day!
Stepping Stones Project We have been supported by the Rothschild Foundation over the past year to provide work experience opportunities partnering schools and other organisations who help young people with Special Needs to flourish and make their next steps into adult life. The young people we work with have so much potential they just need a programme that is broken down in to smaller steps in order to succeed. Our working habitat is often a better environment for them to learn and flourish. Some students have learned to look after primary school children as education rangers, others have been conservation rangers working at many special butterfly and river sites, others have worked in their schools to rewild their grounds for example. It has been so encouraging to see the young people we work with grow in confidence and because of the programme of small steps that we have provided them. This year’s project provided over 90 group sessions to young people from Alfriston, Stony Dean, Chiltern Wood, Aspire Shortenills & Ridgeview Homes with young people from other schools and adult volunteers from our community joining in with many of these sessions.
Paul Stack
Our film based at Beaconsfield, Walkwood will give you a taster of how we get young people of all backgrounds to make a difference in their local community. Watch the film on YouTube We are currently honing our Stepping Stones to employability programme and looking for long term funding as we have special school and college providers queueing up to join in, there is so much need out there. Please contact our community projects manager, Paul Stack if you are interested in supporting this programme e.g. by volunteering (subject to DBS and references) or maybe your business could sponsor one of the programmes?
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Sands Bank Butterfly Transect
Clem Bathurst
Under the guidance of a colleague, I did my first butterfly transect at Sands Bank nature reserve in late May.
sky blue wings, circling around each other in mid air. Not bad for a reserve perched above an industrial estate.
My last few visits to the site were in the depths of winter, so it was amazing to see the place transformed and buzzing with life. In every section of the transect we were greeted by a flash of iridescent jade - the Green hairstreak was present in good numbers, lots of cryptic dingy skippers, wings chequered in delicate browns and yellows, and were puzzled a few times by the misleading flutter of the burnet moth, whose habits and colouration can resemble various species of butterflies. Day flying moths launched themselves skywards at every footstep, it was a shame not to be able to ID these too but time did not allow it! We were also treated to the sight of two Adonis blue butterflies with dramatic
Sands Bank is one of the sites where we work in partnership with Butterfly Conservation, providing tools such as brush cutters and chainsaws, tree poppers and loppers for work parties to help in fighting back against the encroaching scrub to keep the beneficial patchwork of grassland present. This grassland/scrub mosaic is a great habitat for all sorts of species, with numbers of butterflies being a good indicator of the overall biodiversity of the site. Sometimes our work with Butterfly Conservation involves more targeted interventions to create receptor sites for the fabled Duke of Burgundy butterfly - fussy creatures that specialise on cowslips and like a mixture of shade and sunny sites to bask. They are also very weak fliers, and would struggle to find their way to a suitable site across inhospitable tracts of farmland and housing - so creating a network of good habitat could help to increase their range across the Chilterns. Transects like the one at Sands Bank are important to measure the changing fate of butterflies over time, and inform management practices for the site. Its location at the edge of Wycombe is important in creating a ‘stepping stone’ for wildlife through the urban landscape, and surveying it helps to add to the bigger picture of butterflies numbers nationally, highlighting the importance of the Chilterns for wildlife. Taking part in butterfly surveys are also a great way to get out into some beautiful and unique habitats at the peak of the year, and sometimes observe rare species firsthand, whilst also contributing to national datasets.
From top: Adonis blue and Green hairstreak butterflies (photos: Ilona Livarski) 12
If you are interested in learning survey skills and doing your own butterfly transect in the Chilterns, contact Butterfly Conservation at transectcoordinator@upperthames-butterflies.org.uk or get in touch with Nick Marriner from the ‘Tracking the Impact’ programme at NMarriner@chilternsaonb.org.
Kingsmead Volunteer Group We are very fortunate to live and work in a beautiful part of the world and our town boasts many natural green spaces and woods. Plus, we are lucky to have several parks in High Wycombe such as the Rye, Desborough Recreation Ground and Kingsmead. Kingsmead is a particular favourite of ours, as it’s so close to our base. We know as well as being used by rugby players and cricketers, many residents enjoy and appreciate the area, for dog walking or just to relax, enjoy the river and the wildlife that it attracts. Last month as a joint initiative with Wycombe Marsh Community Environment Group a new volunteer group was launched, specifically to care for Kingsmead. The aims of the group are to enhance the riverside path and help manage the variety of habitats
Steph Rodgers
on Kingsmead. The volunteer group will weed and water newly planted hedge plants, plant wildflowers, manage the mature hedgerows, undertake river cleans and help maintain the paths alongside the river. As well as Ranger-led sessions, members of the volunteer group will be out around Kingsmead at different times so please feel free to stop and say hello if you see them working. If you would like to hear more about what is happening, or to join our Kingsmead Group, please email: info@chilternrangers.co.uk Thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund, Community Fund and Marsh & Micklefield Big Local for supporting this initiative. 13
From all of us at Chiltern Rangers...
Thanks to Red Kite Community Housing staff (pictured above) for coming along to Ivins Road allotment and helping us to get the community garden tidied up and ready for planting. Enjoy your summer! 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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