On Wednesday our Site Officer Lynn spent the day with one of our volunteers John at Carrifran Wildwood.
Our work for the day was to check the boundary fence. Sounds like a fairly straightforward task...... but when you then realise it's a 12km walk up and down, up and down, up and down and in suitably unpredictable weather, the task became slightly more daunting.
John organises a monthly check of the boundary fence as well as a number of volunteer days to fix anything that's broken. Jobs include replacing staples, fixing snow damage areas and stabilising wobbly bits caused by the strong winds. Considering it can take a number of hours just to walk to these locations, it really makes you appreciate how important and invaluable our volunteers are.
So why is the fence important? Well we have no 'big' grazing animals in Wildwood. We have planted lots of trees (fresh tree growth = tasty snack) and we are trying to allow the ground flora to recover from centuries of grazing. The fence line is therefore important to keep larger animals out - mainly sheep and goats.
If you would like to be involved in becoming a Volunteer Fence checker then please do drop us an email.
Lynn
Site Officer
