Why the reed and willow clearance at Filsham Reedbeds?

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, 19 October 2024
Why the reed and willow clearance at Filsham Reedbeds?
Strowers March at Filsham after work was completed © Alex Worsley

Ryan Allison, Site Manager, West & Alex Worsley, Senior Ecologist 

The Nature Reserves Team have certainly been hard at work at Filsham Reedbed nature reserve over this summer.

Thanks to some capital works funding from Countryside Stewardship (CS), we have been able to complete some exciting restoration works in parts of the Filsham Reedbed nature reserve. Sussex Wildlife Trust have been involved at Filsham for 50 years now and there have been some great projects over that time to develop the habitats and improve access. Although Filsham is only 19 hectares, it is part of the 156 hectare Combe Haven Valley SSSI, which is an undeveloped and surprisingly unknown part of Hastings. This floodplain is full of interesting habitats including open water, ditches, reedbed, reed fen, swamp and ancient woodland. Historically, the area would have been used as grazing meadow or marsh, up until the 1950s, when the Filsham Farm area was purchased for housing development.

Yellow Loosestrife Bee © Glenn Norris
Yellow Loosestrife Bee © Glenn Norris

Since then, Common Reed (Phragmites australis) and willow species have developed across the site, dominating the more diverse wet grassland, fen and marsh habitats. Many of the habitats have lost their diversity and the reed fen areas were being smothered, leading to a loss of interesting flora including Yellow Loosestrife and Common Meadow Rue. This also then impacts on invertebrates such as the Yellow Loosestrife Bee (which forages on and is thought to potentially use oil from Yellow Loosestrife to line its nests - think of this as invert equivalent of tanking for damp proofing).

We cut some reed and fen areas every year with the help of our Tuesday volunteers and would love to have our ponies grazing in Orchid Marsh afterwards – unfortunately the site tends to flood heavily in winter meaning that most of the reserve is inaccessible. This happened to us last year meaning that no capital works could take place, so this year we had to start working on site in August.

Work underway © Mark Monk-Terry
Work underway © Mark Monk-Terry

As we were finishing the exhausting task of hand cutting and raking Orchid Marsh in the heat of summer (there were some hot days) , we watched as the heavy machinery was brought onto site to start works. It’s always strange to see a 15 tonne digger trundling across any reserve but we knew this was the only way to open up all the silted ponds and remove hundreds of established willow trees. We had two diggers on site for almost two months and they have made an incredible difference to the reserve. The water table is high here and the diggers had to use bog mats to get around the working areas – this slowed operations down but meant that we did not lose any machines out in the middle of the reed beds. Ditches and ponds have been cleared and opened up and invasive woodland removed along with much willow. You can now see open water from most of the boardwalk and the viewing area (for many years this has just been a wall of eight foot tall reeds) and herons and Little Egrets were prospecting the area throughout the works. 

We are looking forward to seeing lots of birds discovering the site and exploring the improved habitats for many of the Filsham plant and animal species.

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