Yorkshire Dales neighbours join forces to create new woodland after flash floods

Fencing and a forestry track are currently being installed to allow for the planting of a large native broadleaved woodland on the brant fellside beneath Fremington Edge.Also taking place at Heggs Farm are youth engagement activities, seasonal volunteer days, natural flood management works, eco-systems research and hay meadow restoration.Managing the enterprise is Liz Sutcliffe, who is originally from Newcastle. Nearly four years ago she spent all she had to buy off-grid Heggs House and its 136 acres.She has since formed a cluster (https://heggscastlecluster.org( with neighbours to work on nature conservation, drawing on support from the Government-funded Grow Back Greener programme and the Tees-Swale: naturally connected programme, which is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.The 74 acres (30 hectares) of woodland will be created by planting 25,000 trees on Heggs Farm and neighbouring Castle Farm this winter. The woodland will be publicly accessible. It is hoped the woodland will help alleviate flooding by reducing the speed of rainfall runoff and consolidating the soil; Arkengarthdale suffered badly from flash floods in July 2019.At the moment more than 1.8 miles (three kilometres) of fencing is being installed to minimise the pressure of rabbits on the woodland. Meanwhile three lorry loads of stakes and guards are due to arrive this week. Several hundred compostable tree guards will be trialled to see whether they can work as well as plastic guards.Member Champion for the Natural Environment at the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, Mark Corner said: “We are very pleased to be supporting the Heggs-Castle cluster through the ‘Grow Back Greener’ woodland creation programme and ‘Tees-Swale: naturally connected’. Here is a great example of how National Lottery cash and other public money is supporting local people to address the ‘nature emergency’.”Ms Sutcliffe, speaking at Heggs Farm, Arkengarthdale, said: “Heggs is a re-naturing project and by that I mean it’s a nature-led restoration attempt. Heggs has 136 acres. Together with my two neighbours we’re 200 acres and that goes from the banks of the Arkle Beck up to the horizon which is the top of Fremington Edge and the moor line wall there.“We have the good fortune to be managing this land now, three separate landowners all with a similar intention to increase biodiversity; restore natural processes where they might have been lost; and reintroduce a balance in eco systems. One of the best ways to do that is work with partners who are experts in their various fields and have the funding to help make things happen on the ground.“Our big project is planting 30 hectares of new broadleaved woodland. We’re trying to do this as naturally as possible. Hopefully in the next 20 or 30 years we will have a very natural, open woodland develop with scrub around the edges and the very top – and that will join existing woodland corridors which exist on either side of our planting site.“As a cluster we envisage restoring the remainder of the site to the wood pasture.”