Devon Wildlife Trust Placement – July 2016

Golden-ringed dragonfly spotted on
an Unconfirmed County Wildlife Site
survey. Photo by Harry Shadwell.

by Amber Connett & Harry Shadwell

This week concludes the end of our second month at the Devon Wildlife Trust – and it has been a busy one! At the beginning of the month we had our official induction at the main DWT office in Exeter. This was a two day induction where we were shown all different aspects of the company and how they work, along with a tour of the office grounds which also happens to be the last water mill in Exeter. We also met three other placement students, one working on Environmental Education and Communications, and the other two working with the Practical Conservation team. 

Also this month, we have been continuing our Unconfirmed County Wildlife Site surveys and working on our plant identification. These surveys have helped us build our identification skills very quickly; we even managed to identify 65 plant species on one survey!

Botanical monitoring on a Culm creation site.

Photo by Amber Connett.

We have now started work on our Botanical Monitoring surveys as part of the Culm Flood Mitigation Project run by DWT. This project mainly aims to investigate how restoration and creation of Culm grassland can aid in flood mitigation across North Devon, along with numerous other benefits. Our surveys will be used to see how successful creation of Culm grassland has been through a process known as green-haying (spreading green hay from a donor site). We will be completing these surveys throughout July and August on all sites that have been previously green hayed. 

Another project we have started this month is our work in the Avon Valley on a site called Brimridge Farm. This involves working in South Devon for 2 days a month, conducting invertebrate, bat and botanical surveys to create an overall view of the health of the site, which is a former arable farm that is on its way to becoming a diverse habitat for wildlife. This will be compiled into a report at the end of our placement which will then be used as part of a long term monitoring scheme for this site.

Harry sampling river flies using a kick sampling
method. Photo by Amber Connett.

We have also been continuing our monthly Riverfly sampling across our three sites to help with the Riverfly Partnership’s citizen science programme. On one of our sites we were joined by a group of Year 4 school children from Appledore Primary School. We spent the morning showing them the methodology and teaching them how to identify the riverflies then they completed some surveys! They were fascinated by all the different things you can find in rivers and really enjoyed kick sampling – so overall the day was a great success!

August is looking to be just as busy as July as we will be continuing with our current projects, starting new ones and completing more training days!