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Companies support woodland work

Northumberland Wildlife Trust has received two cash boosts totalling £7,500 to enable it to undertake conservation work at two woodland reserves in Northumberland.

The first site to benefit is the wildlife charity’s Linton Lane reserve, near Longhirst in Northumberland.

A grant of £5,000 from the Carillion Natural Habitats Fund will allow a team of estates officers and volunteers to introduce a new woodland management programme which will include improved site access and improvements to paths around the sites using natural materials including wood chips from trees thinned on site. A number of nest boxes for tree sparrows which are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species will also be installed.

A large part of the Linton Lane site was part of a former opencast mine, while the western pond was formed by subsidence of deep coal workings.

Carillion plc. is no stranger to the work of Northumberland Wildlife Trust for previously its Natural Habitats fund has donated to its ‘Beautiful Bogs’ project at Holburn Moss and lake and funded habitat improvements along two separate stretches of the Seaton Burn at Fordley in North Tyneside and Seghill in Northumberland .

A second grant of £2,500 from Northumberland County Council’s Community Chest Fund will enable a second team of officers and volunteers to undertake site improvements at Priestclose Wood to the east of Prudhoe.

Priestclose Wood is an ancient woodland close to the centre of Prudhoe and, together with woodland, there are also patches of wood anemone, lesser celandine in early spring with bluebells and foxgloves providing a carpet of colour on the woodland’s floor.

Work will include improvements to the wood’s access as well as the improvement of habitat for woodland birds on the site including great spotted woodpecker and treecreeper, and the removal of a number of non-native trees such as Norway maple, sycamore and beech.

The Trust is hoping that these projects will also help to reinvigorate interest in the sites from local people for whom these nature reserves are most important

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sue Bishop .