The tale of our responsibletravel.com volunteering day.....
The day before our venture into the jungle wildness of the High Weald our MD announced with glee that at 4pm the next day we would see the sun.... But not the rest of the day.....
However, Thursday morning was sunny and with a packed lunch and a pair of wellies I boarded the minibus from our offices off to my first volunteer day with the Responsibletravel.com team. I've only been at Responsibletravel.com for two months and was told to expect that it would be fun and I'd get wet!
We arrived out at Broadwater Warren at 10ish to meet Alan, an RSPB volunteer, where we found out that the area used to be a pine tree plantation, until bought by the RSPB a few years ago and their goal is to return it to a natural heathland. Our day was all about pulling up rabbit proof fence that had protected the pine trees from rabbits, but now all the pine trees were to be mulched & the fence was in the way.
Do you have a Dormouse permit?
I didn't know that Dormice are a protected species & you need a permit to handle them.... The Warren does contain Dormice, but it was unlikely we'd see one & no I didn't, unless you count the one on Alan's camera!
A Pleasant forest walk lead to the fence To be rabbit proof the wire of the fence had been dug under the surface. Our job was to clip the wires & pull up the fence. In 3 teams of 6 - with help from the High Weald team we started. It was hot sweaty work....
400 meters.....
Between the 18 of us we pulled up 400m of fence in about three hours. It was a lot of fun, no one got injured apart from a few scratches and a lot of mossie bites!
The area needs a lot of work, it's 450acres, and staffed mostly by volunteers It is going to take another 10-20 years before it looks beautiful again. So watch this space!!