Welcome to 2022 from the team at the trust. We have big plans for this year and we hope you will find time to visit the wood and see our work in progress. The year started with a tree planting session over the 17-20 of January We were pleased to welcome Emily Langford and two year groups from our local school, who took great pleasure in helping with the planting. Pictures will be available in the March edition of CRN. Also at this time the hedge to the south was laid in the traditional North Somerset style. We have lined the footpath to what will be the main woodland clearing or glade with wild and bird cherry trees. These trees grow fast but are relatively short lived in comparison to the 900 years we are expecting the oaks to be on site. Thank you to all the volunteers who made this planting possible. In wider news the Environment Bill received royal assent in January. This requires local nature recovery strategies to be prepared and published by the responsible authority. Together these are to cover the whole of England. They must describe the area and its biodiversity plus a description of the opportunities for recovering or enhancing biodiversity in terms of habitat and species. This is very important for our parish. The RAMSAR site within the parish is of national importance and is under threat from pollution. The work of the trust is part of the nature recovery strategy for the uplands above the RAMSAR site. So far we have achieved the first small steps towards preventing run off from our site, as well as helping to prevent flooding in the village. The whole of the woodland along the ridge is designated a nature recovery network by the Local Authority and it is hoped more land on the ridge can be sensitively managed under the new legislation to increase biodiversity and recover the very special nature of the levels.We intend to start supplementary feeding for the birdlife on the ridge and many thanks to Henry Lang for his help with this.
