Wonderful Wetland
5th March 2024
I am in love. Not just with my lovely wife (which of course goes without saying), but with nature - especially wetland environments.
Last week I reported the carnage wrought by bewellied human feet around the margins of our nascent suite of ponds in the lower wood. Swift action has since been taken, thanks to the efforts of my team putting in a couple of hours of hard labour during our last Stewardship Saturday.
Six of us laboured hard, hammering in stakes and weaving in fresh cut branches produced from our home grown sweet chestnut coppice. The end result was a wonderful woven fence (a style christened as an ‘Estonian Fence’ by Dan and Emily, after observing similar ones whilst on holiday there). The ones in Estonia may or may not be sufficient to keep Mr Putin out, but I'm confident that ours will at least dissuade people, dogs and even deer from churning up our frog breeding area.
The newly woven ‘Estonian Fence’ will hopefully keep humans and frogs apart
Today is a rainy day in Wilderness Wood, but I'm sure the BBC said it would be dry. The home team are busily dismantling the garage ready for the raising of the latest timber framed chalet to go in its place. Clambering all over a slippery wet roof, I'm sure the home team too would prefer dry weather.
Despite the inclement weather I am returning to the ‘love of my life’ (wetland that is), but this time my focus is on the wet woodland just downstream of the new ponds.
When we returned the Wilderness Stream to it's natural course it meant that the wet woodland was no longer bypassed by thousands of litres of water per day. Now it is inundundated with the waters of the Wilderness Stream throughout the winter months.
The resultant waterlogging means that fallen trees and accumulated organic matter are decaying very slowly, due to lack of available oxygen. This lowland peat bog not only soaks up masses of water, retaining it for wet loving plants and animals throughout the dry summers, but also sequesters this plant-derived carbon, ultimately removing it from the atmosphere.
This is a ‘win-win’ situation, addressing both the climate change and the biodiversity emergencies in a single stroke. Further, water trapped and delayed by this wet woodland peat reduces the impact of heavy rainfall and flash flooding downstream (see post 2/10/2023).
Last week in the wet woodland Jake cut a fallen tree into sections. Now it sits in the waterlogged soil across the flow of water from the now liberated Wilderness Stream, forming a kind of leaky dam.
Today I'm going to turn my attention to further pond creation (you just can't have too many of them). A small amount of pond water still manages to leak into the former stream channel, so today I'm going to try and hold this back too, by building an earth dam across it.
Thankfully most of the excavation work has already been done, by the Wilderness Stream as over the last few decades/centuries the stream has downcut a 1.5m deep ravine next to our wet woodland.
All I have to do is excavate clay subsoil from the sides of this gash and build it up into an earth dam, which will potentially hold back up to a 1.5m depth of stream water. In the dry summer months the resultant pond should stay in water and support a valuable freshwater habitat. Some of the water may also percolate into the soil of the adjacent wet woodland keeping tree, shrub and herbaceous roots moist.
The former course of the Wilderness Stream with the position of the earth dam indicated
Standing in my deep ravine in the rain I get to work digging into the sides and start building up my earth dam. As I dig I consider the wisdom of my actions. Will I be buried alive under a pile of Wealden Clay, or perhaps drown in the rising waters of The Wilderness Stream?
Rain continues to fall and the trickle of water in the channel swells in volume, with a sizeable pool of water starting to develop behind my growing earth dam. Very soon I realise I can't possibly keep up with the rising waters as they threaten to top my wellies. A breach in the dyke is inevitable, so I add sticks and stones to reduce the erosive power of the cascading water. However, I suspect most of the earth will have been washed away by morning and unlike the little Dutch boy in the well known story, I decide to cut my losses and run!
It has been a useful learning experience, but I'll return to the task in the summer once the stream is totally dry. I’ll also bring a length of drainpipe with me to fit as an overflow.
The pond quickly tops the earth dam. Sticks and stones added to slow the overflowing water
Being in love with wetlands does involve the occasional setback, but with love there is always hope. You see, love doesn’t have to be just of the unrequited kind.
Frog Update: The frog spawn no longer contains a single black full-stop, instead the young tadpoles are now more akin to a comma or a hyphen. Before too long Mother Nature will be writing a whole new chapter in the Book of Life.
David Horne
You can also follow David Horne on www.leggingroundbritain.com, exploring the coast of Britain.