RXwildlife Projects

Crassula helmsii is commonly called New Zealand Pigmyweed (or Australian Swampweed). It is an alien plant that threatens the wildlife of wetlands (see Plantlife’s account here) and last year we found it at Castle Water – see details here. This year it is still present and we sprayed it with Glyphosate in July (with Natural England’s consent). This week we have found that some survived the spraying and on wider searching we have found it is expanding, so spraying has been taking place today – we use a blue dye to see where we have already sprayed! Read the British Ecological Society’s account of non-native pond plants here.

Spraying Crassula with Glyphosate and blue dye

Heathland restoration:
The Highland cattle have done a superb job in Warren Glen over summer reducing the dominance of bracken and producing pockets of acid grassland which over the years will grow bigger and eventually create a large bank of acid grassland with patches of heather.

The bracken and gorse seedlings have been cut in the braken scraped area to further stress the bracken and control the gorse seedlings that have been a big problem this summer. This cutting will have to continue for the next few years until the problem has diminshed enough for it to be controlled by grazing.

The colonisation of the bracken scraped area by ground nesting bees, wasps and beetles has been exceptional with large aggregations of ornate-tailed digger wasps (Cerceris rybyensis) and green tiger beetles. The reptile numbers also continue to grow with four species of reptile now using the area with especially good numbers of slow-worm and grass snake.

You can follow the results of the monitoring by viewing the reptile monitoring spreadsheet regularly.

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