Watch Steve's presentation on the Red River Valley:
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A quick glance into life's rear-view mirror and there looming large is the Red River Rescuers' 10th Anniversary! On Saturday 29th September 2012 we held our first scrub bash at Bell Lake Marsh along the Red River Valley Local Nature Reserve. Amazingly 22 people turned up for our very first event, many of whom are still with us to this day, welcomed by a flypast of Migrant & Common Hawkers and Common Darters eager to see their habitat restored. On that sunny Sunday 10 years ago we were using tools borrowed for the day from Cormac, part of a monthly ritual of furtive rendezvous across a car park as tools were collected & returned. That first event was a direct result of two meetings I had along the Red River during August 2012. The first of those took place at Great Wheal Seton & Bell Lake Marsh on the 16th when I met with Gavin Henderson, the countryside officer for Cormac to discuss my ideas for conservation work at those sites and to gain permission & support from the land owners, Cornwall Council. The second meeting, again at Great Wheal Seton & Bell Lake Marsh, on the 20th August was with Jo Poland, one of our co-founders, to enlist her help in getting the group started. I vividly remember Jo's expression as we stood amongst the rampant willow growth that had virtually engulfed Bell Lake Marsh, peering at a small patch of boggy moss where eight Small Red damselflies were clinging on to the wreckage of neglect. My pitch was simple: “If we don't do something right now these little jewels will be lost from this site, so either alone or together we have to act NOW!” Getting Jo onside so early on was vital and, during our first year with the help of our many volunteers of all backgrounds & ages, we brought Bell Lake Marsh back from the brink, with dramatic scrub clearance opening up the way for new scrapes being dug into the iconic red tailings. Gary Barlow & Laura Fox were drafted into the team as treasurer & site recorder very early on and, with the help of grants & donations from various organisations, the self-funding Red River Rescuers quickly emerged as a model of its kind with so many species blossoming as a result of the miraculous transformation at Bell Lake Marsh. While also keeping Great Wheal Seton in favourable condition, we expanded our range of sites to include two areas at Kieve Mill. We have held at least one bioblitz at each of our sites, each one producing hundreds of new species records for the reserve, many of which were present as a direct result of the regular habitat management work carried out by our dedicated volunteers. Those Small Red damselflies that were once so close to being lost have thrived, as have the Scarce Blue-tails. Devil's-bit scabious rolls out across Bell Lake Marsh like a glorious welcome mat where a mass of amphibians wipe their webbed feet. The Angular Orb Weaver spider feasts on the abundance of dragonflies, Long-winged Coneheads have arrived and stridulated their way along the valley, and a Grasshopper Warbler has even graced the soundscape over Bell Lake Marsh. Glow-worms light up the way for the night shift who include the Alder Signal & the Vagrant Twitcher, moths that prove size doesn't matter when it comes to rarities. The global pandemic that swept across the country in 2020 & 2021 hit hard on almost every aspect of daily life and our scrub bashing sessions were inevitable casualties of the Covid 19 restrictions. With no work being carried out for almost 2 years, all four of our sites have suffered and it was incredible to see just how quickly things like the march of alder & gorse across a site can get out of hand again when left unchecked. Fortunately, as we came out of those dark days so many people felt an appetite to get outdoors and do good things, to re-engage and make a difference. All this meant that when our sessions restarted at the end of October 2021 we were blessed with some really good attendances from volunteers old & new. As a result our flag ship sites at Bell Lake Marsh & Great Wheal Seton are now back in check but there remains a lot of work to be done in order to get them back into prime condition. Despite the pandemic, one of the great successes of the last few years was our collaboration with the poet, John Wedgwood Clarke, and his wonderful project Red River: Listening to a Polluted River. A series of meetings, walks and indoor events, not to mention the beautifully produced documentary Cornwall's Red River shown on BBC4 in February 2022, helped to raise the profile of the Red River Rescuers considerably. The first 10 years have absolutely flown by and it is still as important as ever to keep doing the vital habitat management work that we do to ensure the future of our unique & diverse wildlife communities. Thank you so much to every single person that has come along and supported us during our ongoing scrub bashing sessions, giving the natural world a chance to shine. Steve Jones, July 2022 The slide show below is an eclectic snapshot of memories of the early days on our sites from Steve's camera After almost 2 years of inactivity due to the Covid 19 pandemic we were all relieved and excited to get back to the marsh and begin to return the site to some sort of order to benefit the myriad creatures that call this fabulous place home... (Photographs courtesy of Anne Green - October 2021) We were delighted to have been asked by Emma Scotney, Ecologist for South West Lakes Trust, to carry out two dragonfly surveys at Crowdy Reservoir marsh, in return for a generous donation to our group that would cover the purchase of a complete set of new tools for our conservation work. Considering the location of Crowdy Reservoir right up on Bodmin Moor exposed to the harshest elements that Cornwall's weather can throw at it, the variety of habitat and sheer numbers of insects and other fauna was unexpected and the group had a busy and very interesting time exploring the site and recording all the species spotted. We have hopefully added dozens if not hundreds of entries to the County records as well as given the South West Lakes Trust a good base from which to monitor the diversity of the site in years to come. Photos from Anne, Kevin, Jo, Shaun and Gary. We are extremely pleased with the initial results from the 12 hour Bio blitz held on the 5th August 2017 ! Blessed with one of the few fine days this summer, creatures great and small were to be found around our Kieve Mill sites and flowering plants looked stunning in the gorgeous sunshine. All that was needed now were some keen eyes to identify them all. Laura, Lucien and Gary were on hand at 6.30am to empty the mammal traps that had been deployed the evening before and it soon became evident that our log piles created over the last two seasons had already attracted lots of residents with most of the wood mice and bank voles coming from traps placed around them. Meanwhile Kevin was busy putting out all the signs to guide people to the event and to indicate what part of the site you were on. The session really got started at 9.00am as more of the team arrived and by 9.30 the list of flora and fauna was growing rapidly as everyone worked slowly out from base camp into the site. Jo, Shaun, Sally and Yssy, followed a little later by Kathy and George helped create a magnificent list, full details of which are still being drawn up, but one highlight was finding our rare spider Araneus angulatus at this site! The day ended as the sun set but the final treat was to be had as we packed everything back into our cars and the first bats came out to hunt and we listened to them via Gary's bat detector! Very grateful thanks go to everyone who turned up to help and to all the winter volunteers who have helped create this habitat. We will be resuming scrub bashing activities at the end of September and will be having our AGM towards the end of November, full details soon. Below are some pictures from the Bio blitz day taken by Laura and Gary. A big thanks to everyone who took part at our first 24 hour Bioblitz at Bell Lake Marsh in June. Despite forecasts of rain and drizzle, we were delighted to enjoy glorious sunshine, which really helped to bring out the wildlife. Together, we managed to record a total of 281 unique species/taxa – 148 of which had never previously been recorded at this site! Some of the weekend’s highlights: • We are very grateful to George Davis for bringing his moth traps to the Bioblitz. The site was more-or-less virgin territory for mothing, so the majority of new species records are thanks to him! • We also set up some live Small Mammal (Longworth) Traps overnight and, as well as lots of Wood Mice of various sizes, we were lucky enough to catch a Water Shrew! • When the sun went down, we were treated to an aerial display of bats, made even more vivid with the aid of Gary’s bat detector. • Some more of our favourite species recorded include Sparrowhawk, Common Lizard, Great Green Bush-cricket, Angular Orb-weaver Spider, 13 species of Dragonfly and Damselfly (including the site’s rare specialist, the Small Red Damselfly) and some rather fascinating galls. You can visit our Facebook group page for a full list of species recorded. This year’s Bioblitz now sets a precedent for the coming years. We have not yet confirmed a second Bioblitz, but I can say that all who took part thoroughly enjoyed the weekend, and I’m sure we can expect to see a repeat event within the next few years. It will be interesting to see how much of an impact our work will make on the species count. In the meantime, please do let us know about your sightings on our Facebook page or email me at [email protected]. Laura |