Small Woodland Owners Group » 2008

Taking care of dormice and butterflies | 29th Oct, 2008

One of the endless topics that woodland owners has is managing woodland for wildlife. Creating wildlife areas for one creature has an impact on another! Today I went for a walk with Steve Wheatley from Butterfly conservation and Ian White from PTES (dormice officer – great title!) to talk about some of the issues.

Mike and I have started to coppice along the rides, to let more light into the woods.

We started this with Butterflies in mind….
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October Newsletter | 28th Oct, 2008

The October newsletter is available here, if you didn’t get it – and it contains articles on hand tools, an update from Butterfly conservation as well as training courses.
Let me know if you would like the newsletter emailed to you

tracy@woodlands.co.uk

Coppice harvesting efficiency. Part 3. | 25th Oct, 2008

On the last day of the coppice course, David showed us loads of good tricks using ropes to assist with tree felling. It was much easier than I expected, quicker and safer- not to mention loads of fun pulling huge trees over with no effort!

This was a using a ‘figure of 8′

Coppice harvesting efficiency. Part 2. | 22nd Oct, 2008

Chainsaws can be pretty heavy tools and, as with any tool, if we use it incorrectly we can end up with very sore backs and arms. As I mentioned in the Part 1 – the most important thing we learned on this course was how to bench a log and land trees on it. Here are some pictures of Mike using a bench to land the tree,

Coppice harvesting efficiency part 1. | 18th Oct, 2008

Sounds technical doesn’t it?

Well, in many ways, it is! Mike and I have just been on a five day course with David Rossney of Esus Forestry and learned all kinds of new skills for coppicing.