Flanders Moss NNR
Working on Flanders can be a mixed bag, especially in winter and this was never more apparent thasn this week with a the work party with a group from the environmental consultants, RSK. Like a few enlightened companies they had given their team a choice to do a volunteering day to make a difference and the Stirling office team decided to spend a day on Flanders Moss helping to remove the Sitka spruce seedlings that are invading the prime bog habitat.
I had to laugh as 3 of the team had just spent weeks working on Rannoch Moor through the winter doing peat depth surveys and drawing up restoration plans and their reward was…a day on another bog! But we got tooled up and started the long walk out onto the middle of the bog. The weather forecast also looked a mixed bag with sun, sleet and rain all predicted. And to be fair the forecast was spot on, we had all of them. The plod out saw us fairly battered by rain but by the time we got to the middle and set up, blue sky appeared, the sun came out and it was glorious. However the next shower could be seen hiding Ben Lomond and soon marched its way across the moss making it seem like someone had switched the lights off for a little when the curtain of sleet swept over us
Lunch was well timed to be taken in the sun which had some real warmth and then another blitz on the Sitka after lunch resulted in the team clearing a huge patch of moss. This was Flanders at its best: strong fare of wild and very wet landscape, a tough work out, wild weather and a bit of wildlife thrown in, with a red kite and a peregrine putting in an appearance. Not everyone’s cup of tea but the RSK team really put in a shift. Do you have a team that could have a go at this? Why not check out an NNR near you and see if they have a challenge where you can make a difference.
2 bogs, a swamp and some islands 