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Felling for good

Crosscutting by Matt Martin

Matt discusses the benefits of felling trees for wildlife...

In Patrick’s last blog, he mentioned how we’ve been training to use chainsaws and how we were soon to take a cross cutting and maintenance assessment. After a lot of practice, I'm glad to say that we all passed! The next step for us trainees is to be trained in tree felling.

I hear you asking "why would you want to cut down trees? Surely with our changing climate, you’d want to be planting more trees?" In our case, the reason is to improve the health of our woodland nature reserves.

Firstly, we needed somewhere to undertake our training. Not far from our headquarters at Lower Smite Farm is our nature reserve Chaddesley Woods. Within this woodland is an area of overly dense birch trees, which are too close together for any substantial growth. Upon closer inspection, these birch trees don’t vary a lot in age and are in a poor state – a lot of them have squirrel damage (grey squirrels stripping bark from the tree, which then weakens the tree). In terms of what makes a woodland valuable for wildlife, this isn’t great.

So how can we improve this area? We have been doing what’s known as ‘halo thinning’, which is the process of marking a tree you want to keep and felling, or thinning out, the neighbouring trees around it, like a halo. We try to pick the nicer trees; in this case oak and rowan to provide a mix of native tree species, along with the birch that was a bit older and had less squirrel damage. Felling the neighbouring trees allows more light and space for the selected tree to grow. The extra space can also be used to plant a wider range of native species to further improve biodiversity.

Land Rover parked on a track at Chaddesley Woods

Land Rover at Chaddesley Woods by Matt Martin

So, we had somewhere to do our felling training as well as the opportunity to help improve one of our nature reserves – everybody’s happy! We loaded our chainsaws into the back of the Land Rover, donned our chainsaw clobber and set off to our training. The run to Chaddesley Woods was a familiar one, having been back and forth many times with our previous practice. Setting up meant parking the Land Rover on the main track, unloading all our kit and carrying it all up a slope to the working area; we were out of breath before the work even started! It was a clear, bright day but cold enough not to be a bother. We covered all the necessary cuts needed for dealing with different scenarios (whether a tree is leaning against the direction of fall or with it), as well as how to take down a tree that had become hung up in another.

I found the training really enjoyable; you might get home a bit zapped and achy but it’s satisfying work and an incredibly valuable practical skill for a career in conservation. We’ll be practising all we have learnt over the next few weeks in preparation for our assessment at the end of the month. 

Trainees removing Typha Angustifolia from Monkwood pond

Typha Angustifolia from Monkwood pond by Matt Martin

On top of our training in felling trees, I joined fellow trainees Charlie and Patrick with team leader Andy in removing some Typha angustifolia from the pond at Monkwood nature reserve. This involved wading into the pond with a spade and pulling out the Typha by the root. We wanted to control the Typha as, if left to its own devices, it would eventually smother as much of the pond as it could. If this happens, the pond then loses its open water and there is less space for other plant species. Removal is done every year, usually by the trainee team. Future trainees can look forward to jumping into some waders in a cold and, once you start wading through, smelly pond! If you’re a fan of team building exercises, then this is a pretty good one.

I’m always excited to be able to join in with each new opportunity the traineeship offers as it progresses. It’s a privilege to have the chance to be trained up in all these skills, all whilst helping to improve and maintain our nature reserves for wildlife.

Having gained an appreciation for the natural world through painting and countryside walks, Matt was inspired to consider a role in conservation. He is enjoying his traineeship so far and looks forward to learning new skills and gaining more practical experience.

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