Shropshire and Staffordshire National Trust Volunteers

Having sufficiently dried out, workday leader David recounts a Sunday spent in the rain:….

The task at Kinver for this workday was to remove some of the extensive, dense gorse and unwanted saplings that are overtaking parts of the Edge. Removing them opens up areas to encourage the heather to regenerate; and more importantly creates areas for adders to safely bask in the summer.

At this time of year the snakes are hibernating well underground we were told. But when the warmer weather arrives they need the sun’s heat and hence clear patches to soak up the sun’s rays. Within a large area of gorse, we widened narrow gaps and cut out weather-beaten gorse bushes, creating wide interconnected glades; at the same time leaving a dense green perimeter around the area in order to discourage too many people and animals from using this as a thoroughfare and so disturbing the adders and other invertebrates.

Many workdays this winter have been dry, but Kinver broke that pattern by being windy and rainy all day. Despite this the tumbril fire was able to warm us up – if you could manage to avoid the dense smoke which the gorse creates! It probably helped that everyone was also wrapped up in multiple layers, including sizeable gloves, as protection from the spiky gorse which easily manages to get around one pair of standard gloves.

A sizeable chocolate cake, also helped to keep the bad weather out – thanks for that David! Throughout the day the big orange burn despite the rain, meant there was constantly steam rising from the soggy volunteers as they crowded round the blaze for warmth.

By the end as the wet eventually seeped in and energies sapped, the ten hardy volunteers who braved the weather had worked hard to create new adder basking zones, leaving Ranger Ewan very happy!

There are plans to count numbers later in the year to see if the efforts to improve the heathland habitats are proving successful. How do you count adders I hear you ask? Well you probably weren’t aware that some are radio-tagged, so that their movements can be tracked. Adder wrangling – how do the rangers manage that?… well that’s another story!