Can't see the wood for the tree guards

If you have been keeping abreast of whats been happening in the Teign valley over the last 12 months, you'll know that a lot of conifer woodland has been felled to provide woodchip for the biomass boiler at Castle Drogo.

This has left a bit of a hole in the canopy of the woods, and now is the time to fill it. The long term objective for the clear-felled areas is to return them to coppice rotation, so to that end 3,000 Ash trees (Fraxinus excelsior) and nearly 500 other species need to be planted, and fitted with tubes to protect against browsing Deer.

These trees have to be planted by the end of March, or early April at the very latest, a tall order for the team here, so we are calling on the help of various volunteer groups.

The first group to help us are regular visitors to the Teign valley and Castle Drogo, the STOC group.

The STOC (Sticklepath and Okehampton Conservation) group has been going for many years now and consists of people, often retired or those with learning difficuculties, who want to give something back to their environment. They meet every Friday and undertake work for organisations such as the Dartmoor National Park Authority and of course ourselves.

They are an absolutely fabulous group to work with, and achieve a tremendous amount of work in a day. They particuarly enjoy a bit of scrub clearance as long as there is a fire to be made.

As you can see they enjoyed the day and did an enormous amount of work, planting over 300 trees!

We have numerous other groups interested in helping us plant all our trees, from renewable energy groups to the Scouts, more on these when they happen.

If you would like to help, or know of a group who would, contact Tom the warden on 01647433356

The STOC group are always looking for new recruits, ring Mike on 01837840183