Heaps of new accommodation

When I was working as a teenager with the Sussex Wildlife Trust conservation corps in the coppiced woodlands of West Dean Woods we used to burn all of the cut trees that could not be used for either firewood or hurdle making. Currently in the woodland I am piling the 'brash' into heaps.

                                            

This is a bit more work as all the wood and twigs needs to be heaved on top of the piles, but it has the advantages of providing habitat and having areas of rotting wood which I hope will enrich the developing Mycorrhizal Fungal Network which I hope I am creating under the ground in the woodland.

 

Mycorrhizal Fungal Networks are the unseen powerhouse of a woodland and take many, many years to develop. They link the trees and plants together and move nutrients and water around - having at some time been called a 'communication system' between the trees in a wood. Just planting trees does not create a woodland - which is why Oliver Rackham was so dismissive of 'compensatory' planing of new woodland for the destruction of ancient woodland. Those new 'compensation' trees will take many hundreds of years to develop into what we loose every day under the shovel of development.

Rapidly developing an underground hyphal network may be a forlorn hope, but the wood heaps do provide a great habitat for birds nesting (especially robins and wrens), amphibians (toads, newts and frogs), and all manner of bugs as a secure over-wintering site.

As the wood rots a large number of different fungi appear and the heap decreases in size by about two thirds over the year. I plan to re-use the same sites within each compartment so that I am not putting the news heaps on top of the wildflowers that I am try ing to establish. As I move down each compartment of tree coppicing I  re-use the heaps in the previous year's compartment, so each heap has wood over 2 years on top of it, then a rotting phase of 5 years in the 7 year coppicing cycle. I think that in the next cycle each heap will just be a pile of rotten wood, which will be a great habitat when a whole new pile of branches is put on top.