Trimming around the pipeline

A super hot day ahead was forecast with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. The beginning of the week was still fleece and jackets at 10C, whereas today was expected to reach 25C. There were quite a few of us, so I elected not to spend a fourth week on putting up the willow screen. Instead I donned PPE and took the brush cutter up to the oil pipeline to keep the vegetation down. This is a water vole displacement project which has been running a few months. We had already cleared 15m both sides of the pipeline under ecological supervision but a lot grows back every fortnight. Brush cutting the bank The idea is that the habitat is unappealing to watervoles and therefore they don’t make a nesting site there. There’s plenty of other places further down the canal which does have suitable habitat. This will allow the heavy machinery to come in and do the work to sink the pipeline underneath the canal. They would not be allowed to do that under the law if water voles were nesting as they are…