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intouch 49 October 2021 Community
intouch 49 October 2021 Community
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This will provide clean but untreated water with a cost saving of £2,000 a year to the bowls club.
Supporting local communities It is great to see the Bradford on Avon bowls club’s recent project, funded by Hills with a £5,000 grant from the Landfill Communities Fund has been completed. The funding, administered for Hills by Community First, was granted to provide a borehole - a narrow vertical shaft drilled into the ground for the extraction of water. This will
provide clean but untreated water with a cost saving of £2,000 a year to the bowls club. It will be used to water both the bowling green and nearby cricket pitches whilst reducing dependence on mains water. The existing mains water supply to the club is low pressure and it takes around four hours to carry out the watering, which needs to be supervised. It is estimated it will now take less than an hour!
Drystone walls in Gloucestershire village restored Residents and visitors to the Cotswold village of Down Ampney, are celebrating extensive repairs to damaged drystone walls near the historical All Saints Church following a Landfill Communities Fund grant from The Hills Group.
Clearing trees and bushes from riverbanks to encourage growth of aquatic vegetation, essential for providing food and cover for water voles.
Cotswold Water Vole Project Through the Landfill Communities Fund, Hills has granted Cotswold Lakes Trust a further £12,000 for this year which adds to a total of £69,000 of funding towards their Water Vole Project over the past six years. Kim Milsom, Biodiversity Field Officer at Cotswold Lakes Trust gives an update on the project: “Water Voles are still the country’s fastest declining mammal, largely due to predation by American Mink, which escaped, or were released from fur farms many decades ago. Before the arrival of Mink, Water Voles were a widespread and common sight along our waterways; but, such was the decimation, they disappeared entirely from some counties.”
Before restoration.
After restoration.
Work started in March and one wall along the south boundary of the churchyard has been completed so far.
Existing drystone walls between the All Saints Church, the Memorial Garden, the former runway and Memorial Stone of Second World War RAF Down Ampney had over the years been vandalised, with large sections of old stone having been stolen resulting in significant sections of the wall falling down.
Reverend Canon John Swanton of All Saints Church, Down Ampney, has said: “The ancient drystone walls surrounding the churchyard and along the public footpath were in a dreadful condition. It has been wonderful to have had the walls restored to their former glory with great craftsmanship and artistry. ”
Repair was in sight when the funding, administered for Hills by Community First, was granted to cover the costs of the drystone wall restoration back to its original condition so that it can complement the Conservation Area it is located in.
Down Ampney Primary School put together a ‘Time Capsule’ containing various items about life during the Covid-19 pandemic. This was built into the wall, in the hope that the capsule will be found in many years to come.
Kim continues: “In the Cotswold Water Park a few small populations of the voles continued and a project to protect them and encourage their population increase was initiated by the Cotswold Lakes Trust. The continuation of this vital work has been partly funded for a number of years by Hills through the Landfill Communities Fund and has been very successful.” Positioning rafts, which use clay to record the footprints of animals which walk over them, is the main approach for monitoring Mink. When Mink footprints appear on these rafts, cage traps are set and then regularly checked. This approach has removed large numbers of Mink from our area and continuation of the project keeps their numbers suppressed to a level whereby they have only a minimal impact on the Water Voles and other waterside wildlife. As a direct result of
this, Water Voles have now undertaken a considerable range expansion in the Cotswold Water Park; particularly along the many small rivers which flow through the area. They can also be found in some gravel pits and sections of the Thames and Severn Canal. The funding also allows Cotswold Lakes Trust staff and volunteers to monitor their range expansion and population density by carrying out regular surveys. Water Voles require vegetation along waterways to provide food and cover from predators. If long stretches of a river are heavily over-shaded by trees and bushes, bankside and aquatic vegetation is suppressed, as it requires sunlight to flourish. This can create a barrier to the expansion of the Water Vole population. The Cotswold Water Park Trust Ranger Team, along with groups of keen volunteers thinned out or removed trees to allow a healthy amount of light back into the river and, within a couple of years it is hoped that plant growth will return and transform the waterway. “The Cotswold Lakes Trust is grateful for the support of its project funders, volunteers, and landowners, without whom our local Water Vole population may inevitably slide back into decline.”
