My last visit a week ago, was a day event organised by the Woodland Trust. In case you don’t know about them, they are a charity devoted to saving our ancient woodlands. They do some sterling work, raising funds to buy up ancient woodlands when they come onto the market as a means of preserving them. Also campaigning against modern development on them. We have very little ancient woodland surviving in the UK and it’s very important that we retain and look after as much of it as possible. As they say, “once gone, it’s gone forever”. The ecology of ancient woodland cannot be created simply by planting new woods. It takes hundreds – thousands of years to build up the incredibly diverse biology of a woodland. The Trust has been given funding to run a project in Yorkshire to help and advise small woodland owners who own Paws (planted ancient woodlands) to protect and re-establish their woods back to ancient semi-natural status. Some of the owners where my wood exists have shown an interest and we have had visits from the project officer who has surveyed our plots and written brief management plans.

So last Saturday, he had organised talks from themselves and other local bodies like the naturalist society and local tree and hedgerow officer. We learned about the importance of ancient woodlands and how best to protect and enhance what we still have, a bit of history of the site and the flora and fauna species that have been observed there. A light buffet was provided then a mini bus to take us all into our woods for a walk-around to discuss specific issues. Proudly, I was host to the group in my small plot for a while due to it’s varied content. All in all it was a very interesting and enjoyable day. A quick look at my recently installed bird feeders showed some small activity has been going on but not much seed had gone yet. Early days.