Roll up your sleeves and make a difference
This is the time of year for a call to arms; a clarion call for anyone motivated to contribute to their local environment.
I know many of you are already active members of local groups, and regularly involved in volunteering through these groups – if so, feel free to make the most of the following opportunities, but by no means feel obliged to do so, you are off the hook!
For the rest of you who perhaps have heard about practical conservation tasks but were afraid to ask – here’s your chance to get involved. We need you and you will benefit too! Before I go into any detail, allow me to cut to the chase.
From the outside a regular conservation volunteer event may seem a little impenetrable, cliquey even. But let me reassure you that this couldn’t be further from the truth. Spending a few hours participating in one of the following events not only gives you an enormous sense of accomplishment and vitality, it also makes you feel a part of it all – you’ve had a real and lasting impact.
This is the reason why every winter, the Countryside Service organises activities for everyone to participate in. Some doubters suggest that it’s quicker to do these sorts of tasks with professionals and power tools. Yes, that’s true, but that misses the fundamental point – quicker isn’t always better. I argue that its ‘better’ in collective terms for 15 volunteers to spend a morning hacking away at rhododendron, even if the resulting scar on the pernicious plant’s stranglehold is a fraction of that which could be achieved by a single chap with a big chainsaw.
So roll up – roll up, and roll up your sleeves!
This Saturday, 17th January, there will be a morning of scrub clearance taking place at Trinity Hill. These mornings are a really great way for a newcomer to see if they enjoy outdoor work. A few hours spent on a heath in crisp cold weather, bringing down scrub saplings and having a jolly bonfire is a marvellous way to start your weekend! And you’ll even be finished in time to get home to watch the match. On one hand the exercise and fresh air sharpens the appetite and guarantees a good night’s sleep; on the other hand you are helping to improve the health of the heath too.
Sometimes people question the merits of chopping down trees, but in this instance the willow and birch saplings that are being targeted are giving way for a much more valuable, locally specific and diverse habitat - lowland heath. Last winter some of us removed an area of scrub to the south of the car park and even now it has rejuvenated beautifully with a growth spurt of heather and moor grass.
The Countryside Service Ranger, Dave, will be leading the morning and a more patient and sympathetic tutor you could not wish for. Even if you are a total novice, with baby-soft hands, Dave will show you how to handle the tools safely, provide gloves to protect those delicate palms and suggest the spindliest of saplings to get started on. Turn up at ten for some of the most fun you can have with your clothes on – and if it’s half as cold as it's been recently, make sure you have lots of clothes on indeed!
Later the following week is your chance to help a local favourite, water voles. East Devon’s Water Vole Project Officer, Mervyn Newman, is leading one of many volunteer sessions this year, on the 21st January at Offwell, near Honiton. Now, this is an all-dayer, so possibly not the session to cut one’s teeth on. However, if you are fit and eager, meet at the Village Hall at 9.30 for a day of rhododendron clearance in the Offwell woods – remember your sandwiches.
The rhody is growing along the edges of ponds and waterways, which shades the bank and pollutes the water with their frightful leaves. By removing it, watercourses are being made suitable for the hoards of Somerset water voles encamped on the County boarder, desperate to move into Devon! There’s nothing contentious about removing Rhododendron – it’s a plant which shouldn’t be growing within 1000 miles of this country. It grows unchecked, because there is nothing in Britian which can eat the deadly concoction in its leaves and it grows so thickly that it shades out and strangles all native flora (and therefore fauna) beneath it. If you disagree, look under a rhody or laurel bush next time you are out and about and count the species there. You’ll find more under a stray breeze block!
So, two active days for you to get involved in there, a chance to work off the Christmas excesses and work up an appetite for supper! If you are still unsure about participating, give Diane a call at the Countryside Service (01395 517557) who will give you all the information you need and persuade you to make the best decision of the year.