There has been an interesting progress report from the UK Squirrel Accord, who are midway through their project of finding a species specific oral contraception for the invasive non-native grey squirrel.

Plagues and lockdowns are nothing new, as anyone who has ever read the words of the great 17th century diarists, Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn will know.

Well this Barn project continues, albeit in fits and starts. I guess there’s never a good time to have a global pandemic as many of the medieval builders may also have found, however after 3 months of relatively little activity it’s nice to get back to being a bit more productive and pushing the project…

Forestry can sometimes look like quite a destructive process. Felling on a large scale will often leave a site looking harsh and barren, scarred by the ruts and compaction left by the movements of huge machines.

It was a wet day and initially the introductions threatened to become bogged down in talk of SWOG bogs, or woodland loos, which are probably worth a whole workshop of their own. However, we were at Sylva to learn about woodland mapping, specifically the benefits of Sylva’s free myForest woodland management planning system.