Browns Folly woods - volunteering

Some voluntary work from October 2006

Scrub Clearing – Avon Wildlife Trust


After contacting Tim Curley at the Avon Wildlife trust I received a reply e-mail with details of planned voluntary vacancies:


Dear Wayne
There are opportunities for you to volunteer with us on both Wednesdays and Fridays if you wished.On the Wednesday we have a Wildlife Action Group which is a public volunteer group involved in practical management of our reserves. All of the work undertaken by this group is done with hand tools allowing work to take place in the most sensitive sites. Through this winter the group will be hedge laying, tree felling and coppicing. If you want to have a look at the work programme for the next three months it is listed in the volunteering section on our website.

After arranging times at Browns Folly,

Hi Wayne, The group should be in Browns Folly car park at around 10:45am.The van is pretty obvious its got Avon Wildlife Trust written all over it!

After meeting the group in the car park we (15 of us) ventured through the woods to the fenced off plateau area on the old open face workings below the pepper pot tower.
The plan was to clear areas of the grasslands to eliminate overgrown hazel and to coppice it down and to burn the cuttings. The idea is to let rare species of plant and wild flowers to gain a strong ‘footing’ in that particular area of the woods.

After a health and safety talk we acquired loppers and saws to remove the scrub. In the heat of late October we managed to clear a substantial amount of scrubland whilst observing various rare species within.

Browns Folly woods - volunteering