Milford-on-Sea Conservation Volunteers

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1 Milford Environment Group Recording Group (Formed 1989) (Formed 2001) Milford-on-Sea Conservation Volunteers Wildlife Anne Jenks - Chairman 5 Studland Drive Milford-on-Sea Hampshire S041 0QQ Tel: (01590) anne.jenks@talktalk.net SPRING NEWSLETTER 2013 A belated Happy New Year to all our members and a sincere thank you to all the Officers and Task Day Volunteers the former for their outstanding work in running the Group and the volunteers for helping to look after the Pleasure Grounds, Studland Common & Sturt Pond Nature Reserves and along the sea front where much litter picking has been undertaken. We are sorry to hear that Richard Bickle has been unwell and we all wish him a speedy recovery. However, we are pleased to see both Tony Locke and Hugh Corry back on their feet and appear to have made good recoveries from their ailments and accidents and the Group wish them both and all members a healthy The photo below shows Hugh and Tony back in action on a task weekend session led by Hampshire Conservation Volunteers and members of MCV who have been tackling the revetment repairs along the footpath in the Lower Pleasure Grounds where the footpath has gradually been collapsing into the Danes Stream. 1

2 Jim, Mervyn, Tony, Hugh and Barry (HCV & MCV members) Keith, Ken, Tim, Ian, Hugh, Bailey, Barry & Tony Day (1) 26 th January 2013 Day (2) 27 th January 2013 The handrail (on the Danes Stream side) will be fitted at the next Task Morning session on Sunday 3 rd February Studland Common Grazing Project Update As this newsletter goes to press, the new water supply to both the Common and the Meadow is nearly ready and the new fencing work is due to commence at the end of January. During the grazing project survey, one respondent remembered that when the Common was previously grazed there used to be a trough along the boundary between the Common and the Meadow just to the west of the third gate, so when the position of the new trough was being considered we decided to try to place it in roughly the same position. During the excavation to lay in the new blue water pipe, the contractor unearthed some of the old black pipe right next to the new trough. The new trough will serve to provide water to both the Common and the Meadow and has been carefully sighted so that the ground around the third gate doesn t cut up too badly. This will also allow walkers to pass to the side of the cattle when they are drinking. 2

3 The new fence will butt up to the centre of each end of the trough so that animals will be able to drink from whichever side (Common or Meadow) they are grazing. Disabled Access to the Common Part of the Higher Stewardship agreement makes provision for disabled access onto the Common and this is being provided between the first two gates from the Pless Road at the end of Westminster Road. The ground is sufficiently compacted across the Meadow for it to be used by most wheelchair and buggy users. The third gate between the Meadow and Common will also have disabled kissing gate access, allowing users to roam freely on both the Meadow and Common for much of the year. The access at present is in a very poor state and will remain so until all the fencing and gate works have been completed. The access between the first two gates will then be upgraded to allow good access for most forms of wheelchair, buggy and pushchair. But for the moment, use this access with great care! 3

4 Please use the Pless Road & Westminster Road Pless Road & Westminster Road notice board Preview of new Interpretation Board. The gate main access with care is to be replaced with new Interpretation Board board will include a hand-carved wooden surround Studland Common Interpretation Boards The new boards, which have been part funded by the Higher Level Stewardship agreement with supporting sponsorship from Milford Conservation Volunteers and Cllr Alan Rice s Community Support budget, are nearing completion and will also be installed when the fencing, gates, access upgrades and water supply have been installed. There will be two boards, one at the entrance to gate 12 (Pless Road and Westminster Road) and one across the far side of the Common close to the Pleasure Grounds woodland. The Boards are designed to help inform residents and holiday makers about the 10 year scrub management plan being undertaken and that free roaming Dexter cattle will be grazing both the Common and the Meadow at various times of the year. The Boards explain what to do if users are a little wary of grazing animals and who to call in the event of an emergency. Woodland Management A new Era Members will recall that for the last ten to fifteen years or more, the Council has encouraged the gradual removal of sycamore from the woodlands because a grant was being given to them by the Forestry Commission as this species was classified as a highly invasive non-native tree. The Commission were giving grants to the Parish Council to remove this species in order to replant with native species like Oak, Hazel, Alder and many other species. With the recession and reduction in Government funding to national bodies like the Forestry Commission and Natural England one of the first steps taken by the Forestry Commission was to re-classify Sycamore as an Honorary Native and promptly withdrew their long-term financial support for their removal. In order to redress the woodland balance from 75% sycamore and 25% native woodland to something more like 80% native and 20% non-native, the MCV helped the Council remove many hundreds of sycamore saplings and pole size trees and replanted with over 1,000 native species. The replanting 4

5 programme has more or less been suspended because to plant oaks, hazel and alder, there needs to be clearance of what you are trying to replace. Now that we are no longer clearing reasonable sized areas to be able to replant, we are unable to claim for this type of management and consequently, we no longer have a viable woodland management plan. A spring profusion of Wood anemone in area cleared of sycamore We are therefore in yet another transitional management era and without positive direction we are in grave danger of undoing all the good work that has been done by the Council and the volunteers over the past 15 to 20 years! It is with these thoughts in mind that our Conservation Officer has been encouraging the National Park Authority to consider a New Forest Woodland Forum at which the various woodland and forestry workers, landowners, woodland managers, wood-fuel harvesters, woodchip suppliers, coppicing groups, hurdle makers, walking stick carvers and many others can be brought together for the first time to work more coherently with one another in the New Forest. The first New Forest Woodland Forum meeting took place in February and our Conservation Officer represented the MCV and will report back to the Group in due course. In the meantime, all we can do is to carry on with the present Council strategy to remove sapling and pole-sized sycamore so that the sycamore monoculture is at least contained until the Council has decided on what future course of action they wish to pursue. 5

6 Nature Reserves Walks Guide MCV Member Chris Thomas has finished the guide and we are beginning to distribute it through a number of locations in and around the village. They will be sold to non-members (residents and holiday makers) at 1 each, of which 50p can be retained by the venue selling them and 50p will come back to the MCV to help pay for reprinting or go towards other group conservation projects. The Guides are available now from Milford News, Ashton s, Inger Lise s, Shorefield Holiday Park, Lytton Lawn and Carrington Holiday Park. All MCV members will receive a free copy and we are hoping to distribute these with this newsletter. The maps and text fold down into a small six-sided booklet that can easily be carried with you Chris has done a fantastic job in designing, drafting and arranging printing with the publisher of these booklets and we hope that members, residents and visitors will be able to enjoy the benefits of the beautiful walks we have in our three Local Nature Reserves. BioBlitz Event The 2013 New Forest BioBlitz event will be held at Roydon Wood over a 24hr period on 7 & 8th June. A BioBlitz is an event that engages people with nature and biodiversity, including surveying and monitoring local wildlife and green spaces. In 2012 there were more than 65 BioBlitz events held around the UK twice as many as So let s see if we can encourage more people to discover wildlife. 6

7 If you don t want to leave lovely Milford, the Conservation Volunteers are arranging their very own mini-bioblitz right here in Milford. The details of our event are currently being worked on and as soon as we firm up on the multi-event arrangements, we shall publish this on our new Website (read on for more details). Part of our MCV aims and objectives is to broaden the knowledge of our youngsters so that we can leave our wildlife heritage in very good hands, so no doubt one or more of the events will be aimed at young families. This may include a Milford Nocturnal Wildlife Safari, which could include moth-trapping, bat detection and listening out for night-birds. The only condition is that parents and/or grandparents MUST accompany the children.. As Miranda s mum would say.. What fun. If you don t want to even leave your house, we may even organise a Garden BioBlitz where over the 24hr period of the event you simply record all the wildlife you identify. You don t need any special skills and you do not have to Blitz for 24hrs, just pop out into the garden at different times of day.. or night! Wildlife experts can be on hand to help you identify the species that you find so make sure you take plenty of photographs. Keep your eyes peeled for details of this event, which we believe will knock your socks off! MCV Website Launch The Group has been working on a new website for some months and inevitably we turned to David Long to create a user-friendly site that would attract users and be relatively simple to update. David has done a fantastic job in getting the site ready. Keith, Anne and Tony have all been actively involved in its development and we are hoping that one of our members will take it over and keep it up to date. Most of the scene setting photographs (habitats, nature reserves and task morning sessions) have been taken by Keith. David Long and Mike Collison have contributed many of the wildlife pictures. We hope to encourage MCV members, residents and holiday makers to submit their own Milford wildlife photographs that can be displayed in the site Photo Gallery section. We commissioned Aimee Durnell to draw the Milford silhouette that appears at the bottom of most of the pages and like everyone else has contributed their services free to the Group. We thank you all. Launch Date: There are still a few bits of tweaking to do, but we have set a formal launch date of the 8 th March (our AGM meeting date). However, members can readily open the web pages by going to: Please start passing the word around that the site is well worth a visit. We shall also have flyers available soon to place in various shops. Have a lovely Spring and Summer 7