Ragwort Patrol!
Yesterday was my first day this summer spent volunteering at my local RSPB reserve, Rainham Marshes. I last helped out back in April, when tasks included helping to dismantle and rebuild a reed screen leading up to one of the hides, carefully crafting some footprint traps, and completing a water vole survey.
This week's mission was to tackle the ragwort that had started to crop up all over the middle of the reserve. This woody, dandelion-like plant is poisonous to cattle: if consumed in large quantities, it can prove fatal to them. Despite being far removed from Britain's native collection of fauna, cows play an important role in managing the landscape for wildlife. Their grazing habits not only prevent the grass from growing too high, but also leave behind tussocks which provide vital cover for important ground-nesting species, such as lapwings.
Now that spring's avian visitors have raised their broods and left, the marshland's grass verges can finally be topped. Curiously, cattle won’t eat individual ragwort plants so long as they're upright and growing, but once they've been knocked over by the process of topping, they're much more likely to be seen as lunch. Therefore it's important to remove all of the ragwort, before any machinery is employed to keep ground vegetation under control.
We mustn't dismiss the key role that the plant can play in an ecosystem: it acts as a vital food source and habitat for a range of insects, including the cinnabar moth caterpillar, whose numbers are reported to have fallen by 83% over the last 35 years. We had to make sure that any caterpillars present on uprooted jacobaea were carefully brushed off onto the ground, from where they could move on to one of the many patches of weed that had been left to thrive outside of the grazing area.
Three to four hours after we'd set to work, the team - with the help of a couple of specialist gardening tools - had managed to successfully free a considerable amount of land from the wrath of the devious weed. The ragwort was placed into bags and loaded onto the back of a truck, before being driven away. I joined two of the wardens and a fellow volunteer on their journey to dispose of it.
Later on in the afternoon, having given a nearby cattle corral a safety check, we stopped off at one of the reserve's sluices to reduce the flow of water into the marsh. Doing so will soon cause water levels to drop, exposing muddy banks which will hopefully catch the eye of autumnal passage waders that are in search of a bite to eat. Our efforts were rewarded with some great sightings of snipe, kestrels, a seal, a hobby, a wasp spider, swallows, various dragonfly and butterfly species and much more!
This week's mission was to tackle the ragwort that had started to crop up all over the middle of the reserve. This woody, dandelion-like plant is poisonous to cattle: if consumed in large quantities, it can prove fatal to them. Despite being far removed from Britain's native collection of fauna, cows play an important role in managing the landscape for wildlife. Their grazing habits not only prevent the grass from growing too high, but also leave behind tussocks which provide vital cover for important ground-nesting species, such as lapwings.
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| The rather pretty, but deadly, weed in question, Senacio jacobaea |
Now that spring's avian visitors have raised their broods and left, the marshland's grass verges can finally be topped. Curiously, cattle won’t eat individual ragwort plants so long as they're upright and growing, but once they've been knocked over by the process of topping, they're much more likely to be seen as lunch. Therefore it's important to remove all of the ragwort, before any machinery is employed to keep ground vegetation under control.
 |
| The cinnabar moth (Tyria jacobaea) in both its adult (left) and juvenile (right) forms |
Three to four hours after we'd set to work, the team - with the help of a couple of specialist gardening tools - had managed to successfully free a considerable amount of land from the wrath of the devious weed. The ragwort was placed into bags and loaded onto the back of a truck, before being driven away. I joined two of the wardens and a fellow volunteer on their journey to dispose of it.
Later on in the afternoon, having given a nearby cattle corral a safety check, we stopped off at one of the reserve's sluices to reduce the flow of water into the marsh. Doing so will soon cause water levels to drop, exposing muddy banks which will hopefully catch the eye of autumnal passage waders that are in search of a bite to eat. Our efforts were rewarded with some great sightings of snipe, kestrels, a seal, a hobby, a wasp spider, swallows, various dragonfly and butterfly species and much more!
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