SAFEGUARDING WALES’ ANCIENT WOODLAND

A project led by Natural Resources Wales to help restore some of the 19,500 hectares of ancient woodland across Wales has brought in Thomson Ecology, the UK’s leading independent ecology consultancy to undertake surveys of Planted Ancient Woodland Sites (PAWS) within the Welsh Government Woodland Estate.

Many woodlands in Britain are defined as Planted Ancient Woodland Sites (PAWS), and in recent years there has been a drive in identifying these sites and converting them back to native woodland in order to increase biodiversity, and their cultural and heritage value.  Natural Resources Wales is carrying out restoration programmes of all 19,500 hectares of PAWS areas through thinning and site conservation management to reach a Woodlands for Wales (WfW) target of 6,000 hectares within “restored” status by 2025. This, it is hoped, could provide significant opportunities to complement wider ecosystem objectives for nature conservation across the country.

Tim Donoyou, senior ecologist at Thomson Ecology said:

“This is an important project that aims to restore some of our precious native woodland and take it back to its natural state.  At Thomson Ecology, we have been providing strategic advice and expertise to support Natural Resources Wales in doing that.  Back in 2011 – 2012 we completed Ancient Woodland Baseline Surveys of 14,000 hectares of ancient woodland to measure and monitor 12 attributes of a fully functioning woodland ecosystem. This included canopy composition – broadleaf or conifer, native seedlings and saplings, specialist ground flora and threats such as deer browsing and invasive species.

“This summer, we returned to areas which had been subject to forestry management, including Chepstow Park Wood, Halfway Forest, Dyfi Forest, and Gwydyr Forest to repeat the surveys and assess the effectiveness of the thinning and conservation works that are taking place.

“Birds and bats have been identified as excellent indicators of woodland habitat condition and to measure this, ornithological surveys have already been commissioned and are being programmed for spring 2016.  We recently undertook five bat surveys at four locations which revealed that a range of bat species were present including common and soprano pipistrelles, noctule, Leisler’s and greater horseshoe. This data helps us to understand what species are present within the sites and will also improve knowledge of their distribution.

“In future years this data will give ecologists the opportunity to identify and analyse changes to the woodland ecosystem.”

The surveyors at Thomson Ecology used mobile mappers and GIS data to navigate back to the exact survey location, and their botanical and arboriculture knowledge to replicate the survey methodology. They took geo-tagged photographs to provide visual evidence of habitat changes.