Spending time in Comar Wood on a warm, sunny May morning shows the abundance of life. Birds’ background twittering, picking out the calls and songs – chaffinch, goldcrest, willow warbler, song thrush, robin. Bluebells flowering in lush green spaces, together with other flowers – bugle, yellow pimpernel, wood anemone, violet. Insects of many kinds. It feels rewarding seeing life of many forms taking advantage of the new light-filled spaces that have been created by thinning and removing areas of dense spruce.
Thinning work over last autumn/winter was made possible thanks to funding from The Pebble Trust. As I have discussed previously (here), making small-scale woodland restoration financially viable is difficult. This two-year grant, for which I applied last year, has enabled me to continue with my gradual approach to spruce removal. I have been working alongside other chainsaw operators and volunteers to thin the spruce trees in areas adjacent to the track network.
The grant has allowed me to give paid work to two novice chainsaw operators, Louise and Vytas, providing them with valuable experience. I have also been able to give work to two more experienced chainsaw operators, Harriet and Brodie, who are keen to gain experience in low-impact forestry settings, and it has allowed me to work alongside these people in the woodland. We have thinned spruce trees in coupes accessible from the track network, allowing us to then extract felled stems to the track-side using tractor and forestry winch. These were cross-cut to 3 metres and stacked ready to be forwarded out of the woodland.
The result of the thinning has been to reduce the density of spruce trees in these areas, providing more light to allow woodland ground flora to re-establish. The thinning aimed to open up space around silver birch trees within the spruce stand, as well as to benefit better quality spruce by removing competing adjacent trees. This results in a more open feel in these areas and a more mixed woodland. Hopefully in the future these areas will develop a ground flora layer as woodland plants such as ferns, mosses, wood sorrel and bluebells re-colonise. The better spruce trees, having been given space, should develop into stems that can yield saw logs, commanding a higher price when eventually felled.
As well as the thinning and extraction work using chainsaws and tractor, the grant allowed me to organise monthly volunteer sessions in the woodland over the autumn and winter, where we used hand tools to remove spruce around areas of remnant native woodland. The second of these sessions, back in October, was a free workshop on the use of axes and saws to fell small trees. Through the grant I was able to pay Angus Simpson of Acheilidh Heritage Croft to come and run the session. He is very skilled and knowledgeable in the use of axes, as well as many other traditional tools and techniques and is also a great teacher. He is developing his own business in rural skills courses, so the axe workshop was the perfect opportunity to help him with this while passing on his skills to ten keen wood choppers and removing some small spruce trees from Comar Wood.
The subsequent volunteer sessions saw up to 13 attendees, covering most age categories from three upwards. The enthusiastic used the axes to remove more of the smaller spruce trees. Others used saws to brash the lower branches off bigger trees. We focused efforts on areas of spruce adjacent to remnant native woodland patches, where the removal of large overhanging branches from the edge spruce trees gives significantly more light to ground flora underneath. The removal of branches and smaller stems within the spruce patches makes them feel much more open, providing light for ground flora, as well as routes for insects and birds to transit between the different native woodland patches. The volunteer sessions were relaxed events with a lunchtime break for soup by a fire. A chance for people to enjoy time in the woods, doing a worthwhile activity in the company of others. Spending time working with hand tools rather than power tools gives a slower, more gentle experience with a greater awareness of the surrounding nature and has demonstrated that relatively small actions can make a noticeable difference to the remnant woodland patches.
Opening up and connecting spaces is allowing for expansion of a more diverse woodland ecosystem. For me, one symbol of this is the pearl bordered fritillary butterfly. I first noticed this butterfly (which is declining nationally and of high conservation priority) along the wayleave back in 2020. This spring and last, I have seen many more individuals more widely in various locations, including in several areas where we have cleared spruce trees and allowed ground flora to re-establish. I must point out that this is merely my casual observation, and that if there has been a recent actual increase in butterfly numbers, at this stage the reason is not down to my management. But it is very reassuring to see the butterflies finding useful habitat in areas that we have opened up. This gives me hope that what I am doing in the woodland is having a positive effect, presumably on other insect species too, together with the other components of the ecosystem.
Bluebell leaves growing in the dappled light under the thinned spruce is a sign that ground flora are starting to return to these places. Areas that were cleared or thinned longer ago are now looking much more lush with regenerating ground flora. Tree seedlings of various species are popping up in many locations, giving hope that natural regeneration will provide many of the future trees in the woodland. Connecting areas with richer, more abundant ground flora by brashing and thinning the spruce has created opportunities for creatures to move between these islands of biodiversity, hopefully providing them with greater resilience. A mosaic of inter-connected habitats with varying levels of light, shade, different aspects and microclimates should provide ecological niches for many different creatures and plants.
The Pebble Trust grant will allow the thinning work to continue next autumn and winter, with a further series of monthly volunteer sessions. I look forward to again working alongside others to open up more of the woodland and to seeing further transformation and expansion of abundant life into these places.
The feeling of community and oneness with the natural world is such a treasured thing. The volunteers will have both brought their own gifts with them and taken gifts away. So worthwhile in every sense.