Devon Wildlife Trust has this month awarded the first of its capital works grants to a local landowner in North Devon. The awards form an important part of the charity’s Working Wetlands project.
Lesley Prior from Westcott Farm in the Rackenford area is the proud recipient and has used the grant to install vital fencing to improve the management of her site. The farm was selected as it fell within one of the project’s three target areas: Knowstone and Witheridge, Hollow Moor and Torridge & Tamar headwaters.
The fencing has enabled Lesley to create separate fields within a larger area allowing better overall management of the site and helping to protect key habitats such as Culm grassland. It is hoped that this will reduce the over-grazing and subsequent poaching by cattle, as well as helping the rare habitat to spread along the farm’s valley bottom.
Lesley farms Cashmere goats for their luxury fibre which she turns into yarn. She is over the moon with the fencing as it will enable her to show people what goats can really do for the Culm.
Lesley said: "Goats are browsers and not grazers and are able to keep down invasive species while allowing rare Culm Grassland treasures to flourish. The grant from DWT is helping us to help wildlife, what more can I ask?"
Devon Wildlife Trust’s Marie Butterfield oversaw the project. She said: ’Working Wetland’s first priority is to ensure wildlife rich habitats in the Culm are well managed and this grant is a significant step towards this goal. Our small grants initiative is set to help landowners carry out capital works, enabling small awkward sites to be managed more easily. This type of work is needed to save these sites from abandonment, scrub encroachment and ultimately loosing the wildlife rich grasslands to more common secondary woodland."
Working Wetlands has a total of £20,000 to give out each year. Landowners with holdings of Culm Grassland within one of the target areas and looking for support should contact the Working Wetlands team at the Cookworthy office on 01409 221823.
Working Wetlands has been supported by the Tubney Charitable Trust, South West Water, The Environment Agency, Devon County Council, Devon Waste Management, Grantscape and Natural England.
