Gwent Wildlife Trust

Gwent Wildlife Trust
Ymddiriedolaeth Natur Gwent

Wyeswood Common - Back to the Future!

A prehistoric landscape to return to the Wye Valley

There is more than a hint of time travel about Gwent Wildlife Trust’s latest bold venture to ensure that wildlife will still be around to be enjoyed by our children’s children. The Trust has bought 104 acres of well-managed dairy pasture – a monoculture of rye-grass – and will create woodland and grassland, full of flowers, insects and birds, managed by free-ranging livestock.

This will produce a wood-pasture landscape, dating back to the ‘open forest’ wildwood of Neolithic Britain, but which continued to be found as Wyeswood Common in the Trellech Ridge up until the late 19th century.

So why is this land so important to GWT?

It can show what is possible when nature is given a blank canvas. Together with Pentwyn Farm Reserve, it will make up GWT’s largest reserve.

It will link Pentwyn Farm’s 40 acres of species rich grasslands with the surrounding scatter of small islands of old grassland, and connect these habitats to the Wye Valley woodlands. It would establish vital wildlife corridors for species such as dormouse.

Pentwyn Farm Reserve and Wyeswood Common

The project represents cutting-edge conservation

This land offers a golden opportunity to demonstrate how habitat can be created. Extensive grazing will provide a very broad range of niches, leading to a particular high diversity of endangered invertebrates. The resulting intricate structure to the flower-rich vegetation, combined with bare ground and animal dung, will support rare species such as hornet robber-flies, many bees and wasps, and oil beetles.

A wide range of predators will follow suit. Barn owls will quarter the long grass for voles and mice (including the uncommon harvest and yellow-necked mice). Many birds of prey will benefit, including hobby, goshawk and perhaps even honey buzzard.

Lesser horseshoe bats will hunt moths along the woodland and scrub margins. Weasels and polecats will hole up in old drystone walls.

This is your chance to help. We still need funds to to put our plans into practice. If you can make a donation, however large or small, please send a cheque to:

Gwent Wildlife Trust, Seddon House, Dingestow, Monmouth NP25 4DY

If you are a tax payer, Gift Aid can add more to your donation, let us know if we can reclaim Gift Aid on your donation.

Land by Pentwyn - lowest field

Please download the Appeal Leaflet.
For more information, ring 01600 740358 or email Julian Branscombe at jbranscombe@gwentwildlife.org