Late night drama as cattle flee storms

10:09am Monday 9th July 2007

IN April, I wrote a Nature Notes about how the exceptionally dry and warm spring weather was going to effect the district's wetland habitats of marsh and wet woodland.

I seem to remember finishing the article off along the lines that I was sure wetter weather would follow and help to save wetland habitats.

Well, wetter weather certainly was on its way but I don't think any of us had in mind the daily deluges we have been having for what seems to be well over a month now. It would be fair to say that the marshland no longer has a problem of too little water but the opposite may well be true, as almost all the district's wetland are totally flooded.

Probably the worst affected is Puxton Marsh. Usually at this time of year, the rangers carry out the annual orchid count. Over the past few years this number has been constantly rising, but the recent rain has hampered access on to the wetland with the site being unsafe to walk across, even in waders. However, in the areas where it is possible to access the story is not good as the intensity of the storms has flattened many of the previously magnificent orchid flowers.

The site is also grazed by the district's grazing animals project cattle, to control invasive weeds and to keep the grassland sward low ready for next springs growth. Fortunately, there were no animals on Puxton when the site flooded but this was not the case on some of the other nature reserves of the district.

When the bad weather first broke, the animals were on Spennells Valley and Redstone Marsh in Stourport. The ranger service gets a warning of potential flooding and unusual storms from the Met Office and the Environment Agency, however the severity of these storms was unexpected, so when the warnings came in it was the middle of the night and staff rushed out to make sure cattle were safe.

Despite the conditions, the animals at Spennells were still safe and had access to plenty of dry ground, however the catching pen to one of the grazing cells was very close to the Hoo Brook, so these animals were taken away to a safer reserve.

The Redstone Marsh situation was a little more worrying as a couple of inches of standing water had appeared across most of the site but in places near the ditch system water was reaching over wellington depth.

Rounding up animals at night in driving rain would appear to be a dangerous occupation as cattle can be unpredictable and put up some resistance to going onto the cattle trailer.

That night, this was not the case as the animals had also decided that a marsh was not the place to be. I usually talk to the animals when it comes to loading them on the cattle trailer to try to help keep them calm. I explained to them that it was probably a good idea to go somewhere drier, and then they walked straight on and we were off.

I'm not sure what effect all this flooding this will have on the nature reserve wildlife.

I am hoping that whilst the force of these deluges will have had a negative impact the overall effect next year will be positive with the more aggressive plants of drier conditions suffering much worse than the marshland specialists.

Whilst we will not be able to put the cattle on these wetlands for a while yet the promise of drier more typical summer conditions to follow will dry the site out enough for the cattle to go in and do their job soon enough.

EDITOR'S CHOICE