Coppicing & building eco-heaps.

We’ve just had the Friends of the Lake District Fell Care Day and I was working with a group of pupils aged between 8 and 11 from the feeder schools for Keswick School.  We were working in Cockshot Wood doing some coppicing.  Coppicing is a centuries-old way of managing woodland.  If trees are cut down to ground level they will send up new shoots from the stump or roots.  After a number of years, the new growth can be harvested and the cycle begins again.

Cutting back the trees in this way allows light into the forest floor.  This encourages greater diversity of both animal and plant species.  Bluebells, anemones and primroses can grow more vigorously.  Rotting wood-piles provide habitats for beetles, insects and small mammals.  This in turn brings in more birds and butterflies.  When the trees mature, the canopy eventually closes off the light to the woodland floor and the wood needs to be coppiced again.   Ideally there will be a newly-coppiced area close by for the species to migrate to when they need to.

So we started the cycle of creating a mosaic of different ages of coppicing.  We will also be building eco-heaps of cuttings to add variety to the habitats.

An extra bonus to this is that we can identify individual trees that we can leave with adequate space and light to grow to full maturity in future.  There should be some excellent specimens of oak trees for following generations.  These pupils will be able to bring along their own children and grandchildren to show off the results of what they are doing now.

I also had a group of students from the Lakes College who did some great work resurfacing a length of path that was cleared recently by my regular volunteers.  So we are making good progress on creating access for all around the wood.

It was an excellent day all round and it’s a big ‘Thank you’ to everyone who took part. The children enjoyed it so much that they didn’t want to stop at the end of the day!  That’s something we hope they will carry with them throughout their lives.

 Daisy here:

I’ve been running round the woods with lots of people - lots of children and they spent all day cutting sticks for me. It was great.