Monday 22 August 2011

Sling Pool

Around the Trust’s Clent Hills property lie a number of
hidden valleys through which streams run and where water mills once hammered flat the scythes of the local agricultural economy. Part of this local industrial heritage, a small dam, is now in the custody of the National Trust.

It is in the nature of lakes and ponds that over time, with leaf fall and material carried in the flow of rivers and streams, open water will often give way to woodland. The process known as succession is in full effect at Sling Pool. Open water has given way to redbeds established in the accumulation of silt, and without future intervention the conditions for the growth of trees such as alder and willow will exist.

Water is a  force to be reckoned with though. A surge can have the power to scour away what can take decades, if not centuries, to develop. This, however, merely resets the clock and cannot halt what may be inevitable. To some extent, conservation management seeks to imitate the effects of nature, to maintain habitat in one form or another, and to halt the process of succession. Dredging silt to maintain open water, removing scrub to maintain grassland, grazing heathland to prevent reversion to woodland.




Loving the Alien?

A red-pink hue is evident throughout Sling Pool, pervading the reedbed and apparent in the woodland. Although some small part of this is greater and rose-bay willow herbs, the greatest contributor to the rouge palette is Himalayan balsam: an exotic, "escaped" from private collections, which has now become widespread - in part thanks to the curious intervention of some members of the public with a desire to improve nature by distributing seeds in uncolonised areas. Conventional management is to pull the balsam before or whilst in flower, to prevent the spread of its sprung seeds which can be catapulted several metres from the parent plant if disturbed.

"It doesn't belong here....it's taking up space which an indigenous plant could use.....it is so successful it outcompetes everything else".

Flowers of Himalayan balsam and seed pods.
Local populations of invertebrates, in particular bees, are oblivious to arguments about indigenous plants and invasive exotics. So whilst we anguish about processes of reducing the extent of the sweet smelling invader, and the costs and logistics of large scale operations to recreate areas of open water, bees at Sling Pool are quite literally filling their boots - or pollen sacs - with the glut of nectar which has come about through an absence of - what is deemed to be - appropriate management.

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