Time to branch out?

Sam and the trainees take a course on surveying and inspecting trees...

It’s been a jam-packed few months since my last blog but I’m still having an absolute blast on the traineeship!

Recently, I and my fellow trainees travelled to the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester to do a Basic Tree Survey and Inspection Course through Lantra, one of the leading awarding bodies for land-based industries. We spent the majority of our morning in a classroom environment covering safe inspection of trees and identifying the various laws that influence the management of trees. We even covering simplistic ways in which you can determine the height of the tree you’re observing. For example, whilst maintaining a straight arm, we moved forwards and backwards until the stick we held covered the entirety of the tree; by measuring back to the tree, this method can then give us a better understanding of the total height. This is crucial for establishing a clear risk assessment, figuring out the volume of the tree, acknowledging how well-maintained and healthy the site is and further informing suitable management plans.

During our afternoon session, we wandered around the campus grounds learning all about the identification of hazardous trees. This could be due to anything from damaged roots, signs of fungal brackets that colonise and impact the wood structure, cracks and swellings in branches or even deadwood. Our main objective was to complete two field surveys on some chosen cedar trees. We took an appropriate measure of the height, the diameter of the trunk, the crown radius and ascertained an approximate age. I picked up on signs of deadwood from features like damaged limbs, something which can pose a threat to the general public if there are strong winds or storms or if the tree is positioned in close proximity to built-up areas. However, deadwood also creates natural habitat by supplying warm shelter and potential nesting sites for a range of organisms including fungi, insects, birds and bats. Other issues we picked up on were things like bark swelling and wounds, a physical injury that affects the vascular tissue of a tree and acts as an entry point for pathogens. As we carried out a thorough assessment and picked up features like this, it gave us a better understanding of why it’s so important to observe a tree in more detail before making decisions on further action.

Veteran tree at Piper's Hill and Dodderhill Commons

Overall, it was an enjoyable day and it was quite a revelation as to how trees can adapt to their environment so effectively. I hope I can carry on using all of these identification techniques to assist me in future work within the conservation sector. I’d like to carry on improving my inspection skills so we did a follow-up session with Andy at Piper’s Hill and Dodderhill Common - a beautiful nature reserve with a high conservation value for containing some of the oldest veteran trees in the county. We spent our time analysing various trees on site, learning more strategic ways of identifying features that we had been made aware of on our course and how these could be managed if they are deemed as a potential threat.

I feel that this work will not only benefit any future bat surveys I get involved with, when you take into consideration how valuable things like deadwood are for providing habitat, but it will also help me and the other trainees when we start our chainsaw felling in the New Year.