Big Kids Building Dams to Save our Soils

Over the last few months I have been involved in a partnership working project with Cumbria Wildlife Trust and Lake District National Park Authority. The project was based around Blea Moss in Little Langdale and its focus was to reduce the erosion and drying out of the peat on the mosses. Blea Moss is an important bog habitat and in particular for Bog orchids, Marsh Club Moss and Oblong leaved Sundew, so it is a worthy site for a helping hand.

Stone dam to act as a silt trap and slow down the water.

The project is covering peat erosion on both the moss area and the surrounding footpaths and is being worked on by a number of groups and organisations including our own National Trust basecamp team and the Upland Footpath team with volunteering students from Kendal College.

Alec hard at work building a dam from larch boarding.

There has been a week of volunteering on the project and on Monday I was there with Stuart and the South Lakes Conservation group, we had a great day, making lots of Dams and getting pretty wet in the process. Dam building seemed to be a popular task for our volunteers to sign up to, I wonder why? Possibly because it gave us all a chance to be big kids and build dams.. Whatever the motivation of all those that came, it was a very successful day with lots achieved.

How many big kids does it take to supervise?

The rest of this week there has been volunteer days from the Lake District National Park volunteers and from Cumbria Wildlife Trust, the dam phase of the project is almost complete. What a week of work, and we were lucky with the weather too!