On part of the area where we are hoping to re-establish trees, both the issue of breeding waders with the associated calcarious grassland, and blanket bog have been flagged up as a possible concern. I was confident that we were not compromising any breeding waders as I did a fairly detailed survey a few years ago for the BTO in the general area and felt our land in question wasn’t going to be a problem. But there was also this old survey which suggested blanket bog was present high up on the site, even though none shows up on the ‘Magic Map’ portal which shows such things.
So we set off on foot to look for waders and blanket bog. The two areas of concern held no waders, only skylark and meadow pipit with signs of red grouse. A very dwarf nibbled Elder and surprisingly wood sorrel were encountered.
Reaching the top of Fremington Edge we found some pools and wet areas that I hadn’t seen before (its very inaccessible). Out came the probe and we found a shallow area of wet peat averaging about 14 inch (350mm). We were not intending to re-establish trees here, but its nice to know we would not have been damaging any valuable habitat had we chosen to do so.
As we should now have the all clear to crack on, we’re expecting to put the fencing/planting jobs out to tender shortly.
The Heggs-Castle Renaturing Project 