Langdyke has secured a deal to take on the care of a small – but important – area of the countryside near Ailsworth.
Now early work has started to renovate the new M’Lady’s Pond nature reserve in Ailsworth (pictured, above).
After four and a half years of discussion, Langdyke has signed a ten year agreement with Nene Park Trust to manage the one and a half acre site.
The pond is known to be at least two hundred years old, and has not had any work done to it for over thirty years. The trees have now grown in – and around, the pond so much that the canopy has met over the top of the pond.
Naturally, without any sunlight reaching the water, the aquatic plants that were in the pond have all died, and only a relatively small number of (quite specialist) creatures now call this pond home, and nothing that is particularly rare or unusual for the area.
The first task was to work with ecologists Sarah Lambert and Dr Pete Kirby to establish which of the hundred or so trees that were blocking the sunlight should be removed, and in late November 2022 a morning was spent marking the appropriate trees.
Sarah wrote a management plan in 2018 for M’Lady’s pond, which Langdyke is following, although it has now been slightly ‘tweaked’ to take into account the natural development of the site over the last four years.
A two man team from Rockingham Forest Coppicers (RFC) then spent almost three days cutting down the marked trees – which were mainly on the southern edge of the pond to allow sunlight to reach the pond, andimmediately after that a dozen strong group from Perkins spent a day making sense of the mayhem that a hundred fallen trees had made.
The team used loppers and saws to created dozens of hibernacula in areas that will receive full sun, partial shade and full shade next year.
The different locations will create a variety of habitats for the different invertebrates, birds and animals to choose from, to call home.
The hibernacula were made at three metre intervals, because that will give enough room for a digger on the site to remove the top twenty five to thirty centimetres of leaf litter that have built up over the decades.
Project leader Mike Horne said: “We’re hopeful that the dormant aquatic ‘seed bank’ under the leaf litter will produce ‘new’ aquatic plants on site over the next year or two. We will also reprofile the pond edge, to allow easier access for amphibians to use the renovated pond.
Mike added: “We know that Great Crested Newts are breeding in Splash Dyke, which is within a few hundred metres of the pond, so we’ve been working with our John Clare Countryside project partners at the BCN Wildlife Trust and Nene Park Trust to apply for a District Level Licensing Scheme grant, that will fund the digger aspect of the work, and which should encourage the GCN’s to migrate upstream into M’Lady’s pond.”
It is not known exactly when the next phase or work will take place.
Mike added: “We need to re-purpose the trees that were felled, and we’ll be making some dead hedges and hibernacula around the pond area, which will facilitate a real boost to the ecosystem there. We’ll be carrying out some small mammal surveys on site in June, to see which animals are currently calling the reserve ‘home’.
Mike hopes volunteers will help to preserve this ancient pond. Details of dates will be revealed in the near future