Grant will deal fatal blow to balsam

12:13pm Wednesday 23rd January 2008

LAST spring I made a rather wonderful discovery in Stourport.

I received a letter relating to a proposed planning application that may affect council owned land.

Looking at the plan, the land did appear to belong to the council but I had certainly never seen it before.

I was invited to a meeting to look at the planning application and thought I'd combine this with a look at this mystery piece of land. What a pleasant surprises was in store.

The mystery parcel of land was not large but it was full of marshland wildlife.

Marshlands used to be common all along the River Severn but these days they are few and far between and here was one hidden away at the rear of the Riverside Meadows in Stourport and it was in council ownership!

A little investigation revealed that the site had been transferred to Wyre Forest District Council when the district council came into being and had remained forgotten since then. A little later in the year, I spent some time recording the wildflowers out on the marsh and was delighted that the flora was typical of the other wetland in our district.

However, I was rather saddened that, like so many other wetlands around this country, this rare and special marsh flora was being destroyed by that ever present alien invasive weed Himalayan balsam and the more natural but never the less fatal encroachment of native scrub.

This would never do and a rescue plan was needed. Fortunately, Stourport Town Council came to the rescue by joining forces with us and applying to the Lottery fund for a Breathing Spaces grant.

The money made available through this grant will deal a fatal blow to the dreaded balsam by paying for fencing which will allow the cattle of the Wyre Forest GAP into the area.

These hardy rare breed beasts have a well proven track record of eradicating this plant on many of the other marshlands of the district.

They will also prevent scrub encroachment as they are also rather partial to young trees and will even eat bramble.

Good as they are, they find more mature scrub too much to handle so to control this a more hands-on approach was needed.

Late last year, groups of both young and old volunteers joined up with the rangers to cut away at this scrub and a fantastic job they did as well.

Unfortunately, the site had been neglected for so long that some of this scrub had grown to the size where even the determined muscles and sharp bow saws of these groups couldn't cope and a specialist group of tree surgeons had to be brought in and it was here we met our first difficulty.

Trying to work on a marsh in winter is bound to be difficult. The site flooded and then froze but still these hardy tree surgeons persevered.

However ,the water level has kept on rising and with the present rains, it looks like the site will soon be completely flooded out so tree work has stopped.

We will just have to wait for the water to drop away and then this work can be completed.

Once this is done, the site's fencing will go in as well as a short boardwalk track that will allow those interested to enjoy Stourport's forgotten wetland or Moorhall Marsh as it will soon be called.

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