February 4th visiting Canwood and exploring their rewilding project

It was a sunny Somerset morning, the Wessex home education group all met at Canwood, an 118 hectare, private rewilding project based near north Brewham in Somerset owned by Ben Goldsmith . We met Simon Nash, an incredible ecologist working for the rewilding of Canwood, we set off following simon as he took us around canwoods beautiful grounds, we first looked at one of the seven newt ponds on Canwood, these ponds or ‘scrapes’ fill naturally and home multiple species of wildlife and also acting as a drinking source for other animals. The newts spend most of their time out of the ponds and roam a few kilometres. Ben goldsmith took on canwood in about 2012 and has promoted natural tree growth, this means letting the land scrub over with brambles and bushes which protect the naturally grown young trees from deer, these trees grow from seeds that have fallen from other trees or are dropped from birds claws these trees are more resilient and stronger . The damage that young trees get that have been planted by people is massively different from the naturally grown trees that are protected by brambles etc the brambles and bushes that protect the naturally grown tress also give a good home for smaller birds such as robins . As we carry on around canwood we can hear the peaceful song of a Robin and Simon tells us about the importance of leaving hedges to grow out, and not to cut them, they are a refuge for a large array of wildlife. The grounds are full of crab apple trees, field maple trees and silver berches and grand old oak trees border the land, on one of these oak trees we found a door mouse box and on another a bee home box . Simon and Ben lead the group on to the winding stream that beavers now inhabit. The beavers have been very busy damming the stream, this stream is the headwater of the river frome, they have dammed the stream in multiple places leaving little trails of bark stripped branches and teeth marks from gnawing on logs, they started this work about four months ago. Pencil shaped tree trunks are left from where the beavers have taken down the top part of the tree, these trees can be quite chunky and wide and it was incredible to see how they have done it. There are about five active pairs in this area and a pair at canwood, they are about 80-90 cm, these beavers are very territorial and control about 1-2 kilometres. We then found the beavers ‘lodge’ which was located on a small island in the middle of a large natural pond, there is a chance there will be kits in spring April/may, the lodge is fairly new and carefully built Many other animals have been introduced into canwood such as deer, Scottish wildcats, wild boar, Tamworth pigs, chickens and longhorn cattle. The group werelead to the Scottish wildcats and shown where they live, at the moment canwood have two male wildcats and are hoping to bring in two new females for the possible chance of young which is very exciting! The wildcats range over several kilometres and are also very territorial. Ben and Simon are hoping to let their longhorn cattle roam over the land and in future have a heard of wild exmoor ponies.