We received funding from Severn Trent Water through their Boost for Biodiversity programme, which has funded the creation of wetland habitat and restoration of floodplain meadows on the River Dove.
Floodplain meadows are a rare habitat and so their restoration is important. They also provide a sustainable way to produce a crop to feed to livestock and have many benefits from helping to keep rivers clean by removing nutrients, sequestering carbon, and storing water thereby helping to reduce flooding.
The work carried out has been supported by the Floodplain Meadows Partnership and you can watch a short film featuring the landowner, Graham Prince here
Wetland features including scrapes, reprofiled and new ditch, ponds and pools have been created and an area where water levels have been raised have also been created. The scrapes and ditch scallops have already attracted a number of new species for the farm including great white egret, small egret, green sandpiper as well as grey wagtail, kingfisher and sedge warbler which bred this summer for the first time on the farm.
Snipe use the newly rewet, rushy areas in the winter and several species of dragonfly have started to use the new pools and ponds including the broad bodied chaser dragonfly, Libellula quadrimaculata
