“FOUR MONTHS IN, I saw a ghostly flash of white: it was a little egret. Herons hunt here now, wrens flit in and out, and dippers perch on the tips of tree branches poking from the water. We call it our Devon mangrove.”
Joe Middleton is talking about Watkins Wood, south of Dartmoor, which was planted just after the millennium in memory of the Woodland Trust’s founder Kenneth Watkins. Here, among thousands of 25-year-old trees, Joe has been creating something radical – an underwater forest.
“The Torr Brook flows through the wood,” he explains. “It was getting steadily deeper and faster, and that’s what the UK’s farmers and miners traditionally wanted – to drain the land of water as swiftly as possible. But with climate change, this isn’t sustainable. Extreme floods and droughts mean our streams need to go slower instead. So we’ve intervened, and what’s resulted is some of the rarest habitat in the UK.”
“The wood is definitely beaver-ready, and we'd love to hand over land management duties to them.”
Joe Middleton, Watkins Wood
WILLOW WARBLER
The clue’s in the name. Willows support more moths and other insects than any native tree except oak, and these tuneful summer visitors love scrubby, soggy wet woodland to shelter their dome-shaped nests.
One day last September, Joe and his team thinned out the young wood, carting four lorryloads of felled timber to make a linear ‘leaky dam’ stretching 25 metres downstream. “We also took mud from the banks and built a huge earth bund. It took 20 minutes, and afterwards we nipped off for a quick coffee. We came back to find a flooded wood.”
The result looks a lot like instant ‘wet woodland’, a boggy, swampy ecosystem that now survives only in small corners of our countryside. Dominated by damp-loving trees like willow, alder and downy birch, its humid air, decaying wood and prolific invertebrate life make it rich in biodiversity. Frogs ribbit, newts wriggle, and grass snakes swim out to hunt for both. Insect-eating tits and buntings flit in the understorey.
LESSER SPOTTED WOODPECKER
The pulsing insect life of wet woods is manna to the lesser spotted woodpecker. This sparrow-sized and rapidly declining species excavates dead wood for nesting – alder is a favourite choice.
“The air thrums with insects, which in turn attract wet woodland specialists like willow warblers and lesser spotted woodpeckers.”
Paul Jarczewski, Tattershall Carrs
Nine months on, Torr Brook has taken a whole new course, flowing softly through an arboreal wetland the size of six football pitches. “As silt builds up, it creates lovely pools and riffles, perfect for spawning trout,” Joe reports. “You’ll need wellies, but you can follow the stream through the trees, passing grassland, marshes and so many ponds.”
Joe’s seen otter prints here, there are grey wagtails, and he hopes marsh and willow tits will soon move in. Bigger beasts, too. After several high-profile reintroductions, the elusive beaver is no longer a rarity in Devon’s watercourses, and this shady haven could make their ultimate des res.
YELLOW PIMPERNEL
A lover of stream banks and gullies, this star-shaped flower often lights up wet woodland, alongside plants like meadowsweet and marsh marigold. June is the month to see it shine.
“The wood is definitely beaver-ready, and we’d love to hand over land management duties to them. They’d make sure the habitat is always evolving, with new pools and channels, and a refresh after every storm.”
There’s a wider effect: in the ancient woods that cloak the nearby River Avon, dormouse numbers are booming thanks to the conditions wet woodland creates: “They don’t want to be in a tree hollow in summer when the temperature hits 35°C, and now they can go and cool off by the shady streams. It’s like The Wind In The Willows down there.”
If the flooded wood does lure a lodging beaver, it will be the first on Trust turf, though quite a few pass through. On our sprawling Glen Finglas estate, in the Trossachs, they like to visit a thicket of tangled alder and willow by the shores of Loch Venachar – our boss there, Hamish Thomson, says the signs are unmistakable.
DAUBENTON’S BAT
The preferred diet of the ‘water bat’ is midges and caddisflies, and it skims low through damp woods like a tiny hovercraft, scooping bugs with its tail and snacking on the wing
“We call that wood our Finglas bayou, and they swim in from their lodge in the Blackwater Marshes,” he says. “I’ve found fallen ash 30cm in diameter. They leave chisel-like toothmarks, weakening a trunk, and when the wind brings it down they go for a munch. What’s left are sharp beaver spears – hordes of them.”
In northern England, the colloquial name for wet woodland is carr – and despite being immensely important, it has almost entirely vanished. Near Sleaford in the Lincolnshire Fens, where peaty alder and birch woods once reigned, two ancient fragments have held their ground – the Trust’s Tattershall Carrs, famed for their bluebells and badged as Sites of Special Scientific Interest.
WOOD SORREL
This dainty good-looker folds up its purple-veined petals at nightfall. It likes shade and mossy moistness, so is often found creeping along limbs in the UK’s oldest wet woodlands.
“The soil here is rich,” says Paul Jarczewski, the Carrs’ custodian, “so the Fens have been drained for farming. But these remnants are riven with narrow streams, full of meanders. Maybe this patch was just too awkward!”
Undisturbed for centuries, Tattershall’s flora has flourished. The flushes are hemmed with rare alternate-leaved golden saxifrage, while yellow pimpernel, remote sedge and moschatel love the damp soil.
“The air thrums with insects, which in turn draw wet woodland specialists like willow warblers and lesser spotted woodpeckers. And we have Daubenton’s bats, which pluck insects from the surface of the water.” A glimpse of the future for Devon’s Avon Valley, perhaps? Paul thinks so: “Where there’s water, there’s life.”
BREAKING THE BANK
Freeing this Essex river has created a shimmering new wetland, with water voles set to profit
THIS FLOODED FIELD at Fordham Hall near Colchester (pictured) marks the latest chapter in a conservation transformation that’s been unfolding since the Woodland Trust bought the estate in 2002. Fordham is huge – fully two square kilometres – and our half million new trees have helped to shape a mosaic of wood pasture, scrub and meadows full of wildflowers.
Last October Essex and Suffolk Rivers Trust moved in to dig ponds and scrapes across Fiddlers Hill Meadow, spilling the River Colne across its floodplain and forging a new frontier for voles, bats and wading birds.
“The East Anglian coast is globally important for waders, and sites like this offer space to feed and nest,” says the Woodland Trust’s Danielle Carbott. “There is wet woodland and a new hibernaculum for snakes and lizards. The project should mitigate flooding in the area, too.”
Back in 2010, Essex Wildlife Trust reintroduced 600 water voles to Fordham, moved from the Thames Gateway inside Pringles snack tubes. And after a campaign to clear the Colne of predatory invasive mink, it’s hoped the new wetland will help boost their numbers. The project has been funded by Anglian Water, Essex & Suffolk Water, the Enovert Community Trust and Garfield Weston Foundation.
