Devon Wildlife Trust: Wetlands project starts to sow the seeds

This month, Devon Wildlife Trust's Working Wetlands Project team has been busy with several projects to spread 'green-hay' on sites in north and west Devon to create more wildflower-rich meadows. 'Green-hay' refers to the process of cutting flower-rich grassland areas on existing wildlife sites and quickly baling them un-dried. The bales are then transported to nearby local sites where they are spread onto prepared ground to introduce the seed onto sites which are currently of lower wildlife value. The process is a cost-effective way of enhancing or creating meadows and pastures as part of existing Natural England Environmental Stewardship agreements or to expand areas of wildlife habitat so landowners have more chance of securing a Stewardship agreement. The Working Wetlands team has gained considerable experience planning and managing these projects with many hectares of ground now blooming with the plants which have been spread since the Devon Wildlife Trust's landscape-scale project began in 2008. Stuart Coleman from the Working Wetlands Team said: "The team have always worked closely with landowners and local contractors to make these projects a success, but this year Working Wetlands has expanded its own machinery-ring to include a new 90 hp tractor and fodder chopper/spreader so we can spread the flower-rich bales ourselves. This has made a real difference speeding up operations and reducing costs for landowners enabling even more fields to be enhanced in this way." One of the projects completed this month has been 5.5 ha of fields at Simon Kerslake's "Higher Grinacombe" holding in Broadwoodwidger. Simon said: "This has been a really good project and something I had never heard of before so when DWT got in touch I thought it was quite inspirational and I was keen to go along with it. I'm now really excited to see the results and interested to do more in the future. I think the extra wildlife that will hopefully result from the work will be really beneficial to the farm." The charity is now looking for other landowners in the northern and western areas of Devon who might be interested in helping wildlife by using green-hay to create flower-rich meadows. To express an interest call the Working Wetlands team on 01409 221823.
Working Wetlands is a seven year landscape scale project and this is just one of many initiatives being undertaken by the scheme across 65,000 hectares of the Culm Natural Area. It has been supported by South West Water, Tubney Charitable Trust, The Environment Agency, Devon County Council, Devon Waste Management, GrantScape and Natural England