Although we are still in the depths of winter and perhaps the most dangerous time of year for conservation work (I’m afraid you’ll have to read the post for the details), conservation work continues at Wilderness Wood. Not much by way of visible wildlife, but just like with vegetable gardening, much of the most important work gets done at this time of year.

Nature Reserves come in all shapes and sizes and serve different purposes. Wilderness Wood is striving to improve its biodiversity but can be a victim of its own success, drawing large numbers of urban visitors to enjoy a day amongst trees and wildlife. But its greatest value to nature conservation has to be its role in hooking visitors into conservation and rewilding appreciation, in a way that would not be possible for large wildlife rich nature reserves and wild space in more hard to reach locations.

As promised just a week ago, a group of volunteers set out to carry out remedial work in an attempt to bring back life to an ancient beech tree, by rerouting a badly eroded footpath and by adding piles of soil, leaf litter and logs to improve the water retention of the soil. With our ever-drying summer weather this may be the only chance we have of saving this gigantic old beech tree.

Bat Park is slowly turning into a unique area of Wilderness Wood, designated as acid lowland grassland, with adjacent heathland. Very few trees grow in this slice of the wood, but lots of other species not found elsewhere at Wilderness Wood and only rarely in the rest of The High Weald. We hope to have a few Bast Park Open Days this year when the public will be able to attend a guided tour of the site and see how nature is progressing.

Deep in Wilderness Wood there sits a very big beech tree. It will come as no surprise that it has been awarded the name of Big Beech. It has probably stood here for anything from 200 to 400 years. I suspect at least 300.

Big Beech could well be dying due to a number of factors, not least summer drought caused by The Climate Change Emergency. However we have a plan to resurrect this iconic tree.

Water management at Wilderness Wood is an increasingly worrying problem. Summer drought and winter flood are both issues that need to be addressed.

It is late December and winter is really setting in. Surely no self-respecting creature is going to show itself at this time of year! A nice long hibernation sleep sounds pretty attractive to me. But not so. Temperatures are still above zero for most of the day and there is still food to be found if you know where to look.

It’s the winter solstice. Dark, cold and miserable. Cheer up - time for a song, some poetry, flaming torches, lots of alcohol and some odd looking life forms down at Wilderness Wood.

Having acquired some deer stalking skills under the guidance of the venerable Gazza, I go solo today looking for signs of deer in the wood, with I have to say no small success!

Deer in the wood may sound like a good sign of nature recovering. It is not. Nature is out of balance when the natural predators of deer (Lynx, Wolf etc.) have become extinct due to hunting by Man. Too many people have grown up thinking all deer are Bambi. However, deer are a serious pest in our natural woodland, Wilderness Wood included. This post outlines some of the signs of deer in the wood as we follow Gazza (The Deer Hunter) on a Wilderness Wood field excursion.

Anne lived and worked at Wilderness Wood for 30 years. Every year in October, she comes back to run a series of fungi forays. Each year is different for the fungi - the weather, the conditions, the projects by Dan and Emily! But Anne always comes good at finding a range of fungi and inspiring a new generation of participants about the wonders and importance of the fungi world. Thank you Anne. Keep coming. This year, our French volunteers, took part in one of the forays and made this short film with an interview with Anne and close-ups of the fungi.

Drainage is a vital aspect of site management at Wilderness Wood, be it ensuring the workshop does not become inundated by water after heavy rains, supplying water to young hedge shrubs, or the creation of wet woodland and ponds. Without careful control of water movement through the wood we would be unable to ensure our mosaic of habitats stays in good health. Thankfully numerous volunteers do their part when it comes to the ‘grunt’ required.

After taking a break over the summer, David is back to continue with his periodic blogging. This post he deals with the thorny problem of rescuing a young planted hedge from the embrace of bracken and bramble invasion at Bat Park. Meanwhile the conservation volunteers have been busy at Hazel Grove clearing understory and erecting a deer exclosure.

During our annual Working With Wood Week in July, we set a moth trap and were lucky enough to find some really beautiful creatures in it when we opened it the following morning!

Staying the night at Wilderness Wood, in Yaffle, one of their two timber-framed cabins, gives me a rare chance to witness the wildlife of the wood after all the day visitors have gone home. I get to show my wife Frances all the projects I’ve been working on since her last visit to the site. Birdsong, bats, spring flowers, ponds, grassland and of course lots of trees.

Water is ‘the stuff of life’. The wildlife of Wilderness Wood is being transformed by encouraging it to stay on site rather then rush off downstream. Elsewhere in the wood the deer might have been fenced out of Bat Park but the young hedge saplings are now being threatened by invasive Bracken. It seems all our wins are temporary at best. A conservationists work is never done!

Late April in ancient woodland in the High Weald - it must be bluebell time! Bluebells do particularly well in coppiced ancient woodland with its periods of increasing shade followed by a few short years of illumination when the coppice is cut. Elsewhere in Wilderness Wood we are working hard to retain as much water as possible using a variety of methods - leaky dams, pond construction, stream diversion and runoff channels on steep pathways. This will hopefully see the woodland through the near rainless months from May to September. Climate change is a reality and we have to modify our management of the wood to address this change.

It is coming up to the time of year when humans and their dogs pick up blood-sucking passengers whenever they go for a walk in the woods or long grass. Time for us all to brush-up on our tick awareness.

We are trying to create an oasis of permanent wetness in the middle of Wilderness Wood. Leaky dams, restored ponds, redirecting the Wilderness Stream through wet woodland and now repurposing of the former stream channel into a series of dammed-up ponds.

This week it is all about spring flowers at Wilderness Wood. Many of these are triggered into flower by day length or rising temperatures. It is certainly a rush for many of them to get all the energy sapping business of sex out of the way before the leaves appear on the deciduous woodland trees and shade them from their only source of energy - sunlight. If you want to tick them off then you’ll have to get down to Wilderness Wood pretty sharpish then!