I would like to say a big thank you to all our volunteers who have helped us this summer. We’ve certainly had a busy one and have collectively achieved a lot. This summer our volunteers have helped with the obligatory bracken bruising that we do every summer in our SSSI upland meadows to keep bracken at bay whilst still allowing the flowers to set seeds, and in areas where we have glow worms to increase their habitat. We’ve held our first (and second) community bioblitz events where we managed to record so many different plants, insects and birds (see the September newsletter for a more detailed breakdown). We had our summer thank you event where the volunteers explored our extensive archives and enjoyed some cake.

We’ve had our first two sessions of our Women’s Volunteer Group who meet on the first Thursday of every month, as well as having groups join us from Shared Lives, the Wallich and Powys MIND. The volunteers also maintained some trees that were planted several years ago. We made more wool bunds which would be used to create ‘leaky dams’ on the peatlands. The first week in September was set for the installation of our wool bunds alongside installing some geotextile on bare areas of peat. We chose the first week in September as the installation date as the previous year we had gone in November and the area of peatland that we are working on was far too wet, so we were hopeful that it would be much drier in the first week of September. The heavy rain we had for the last fortnight in August meant that much of the area was once again too wet to work, so we could only do the installation around the edges of the site where it was dry enough to work. We will look to revisit this if there is a sustained dry spell as we only have permission from NRW to do the volunteer peatland restoration outside of bird nesting season which does tend to be the wetter months. Later in September the volunteers installing another 34 nest boxes in our woodlands as well as cleaning out the nest boxes that they installed last year.

In the coming months, we will have opportunities including; invasive species removal – this involves using pruning saws to remove self-seeded Sitka spruce from an area that was previously a Sitka plantation where the Celtic rainforest is now being allowed to naturally expand into. There are quite a lot of sessile oak trees and other broadleaf trees that are surrounded by the Sitka trees, so it is lovely to be able to create a clearing around the oak trees to allow them to thrive. We will also be venturing to the edges of the peatlands to help with a tree planting feasibility survey. In the survey we will be measuring the depth of peat to see if there are areas with no peat where we could plant trees (of appropriate species) in the future. There will be further opportunities to help our peatland team with their peatland depth surveys which will help to determine the methods used for the peatland restoration that their contractors will carry out.

If you would like to know more about our volunteering opportunities, please visit our volunteering website here where you can also register as a volunteer.