Singing in the rain!

Well, not quite. Heavy rain and driving wind are not the most pleasant of conditions to be searching for plants, especially when you're looking in ditches, but eight hardy volunteers from the local area took up their poles and grapnels and accepted the challenge. The day out was part of an exercise organised by Pete Stroh (Esmeé Fairbairn Foundation Project Officer) to examine ditches within Wicken Fen NNR and the restoration land at Bakers Fen. The survey, which is due to run for at least the next five years, is looking at the structure of ditches and ditch vegetation within the NNR and Bakers Fen, as well as identifying the plants found in the water and at the waters edge.

Ditches within the NNR contain an array of aquatic plants that occur there due to a number of factors, one of which is known to be the management undertaken by the National Trust. This maintenance can involve brinking (cutting the bank-side vegetation), roding (cutting the submerged vegetation) or slubbing (removing the excess silt which has accumulated over the years), and is undertaken on different sections of ditches on either a 4, 8 or 12 year rotation. However, at Bakers Fen and the Vision area as a whole, a different approach is being trialled. With such large areas of land now under restoration, the cost of regularly maintaining an additional 12km of ditches (so far!) could be very expensive. With this in mind, shallow slopes leading to the waters edge have been created in many of the ditches within the Vision area, replacing the steep sided 'wet fences' that are characteristic of the NNR. This has the dual purpose of allowing access to water for grazing animals and the opportunity for the Highland cattle and Konig ponies to create areas of open water and disturbed muddy margins. This in turn could provide a mosaic of different habitats which would suit a variety of invertebrate, bird and aquatic plant species.

Surveying for this year has now finished, with the results due to be analysed over the winter months. Over the next 5 years, a picture should start to emerge of how the differing management techniques impact on the ditch flora, and give us some understanding of the benefits which each system has for supporting wildlife. If you have an interest in plants and would like to get involved, please contact Pete on p.stroh@anglia.ac.uk.