Unusual task this time around which highlights how some conservation activities aren’t actual conservation but are still necessary to looking after a site. By this I mean making the site safe for visitors, and in this case the danger comes from a sheer drop of the edge of a cliff.
Some years ago a fence had been put up to stop people inadvertently walking off the edge of the quarry, the edge of the quarry being next to the car park. Over the years the wooden fence posts have rotted and the fence had fallen over; Bolton Council asked us to if we could do something to fix it.
The first time we came here in November 2025 we cut down the rhododendron that had grown up near the cliff edge and created a dead hedge set back from the cliff edge. Then we began restoration of a hedge that had been planted previously, partly by laying the hedge but also planting new hawthorn/blackthorn to fill in the gaps and extend the hedge line where needed. We then began the process replacing the fence posts, and recovering and reusing the metal sheep fencing that had become buried under years of fallen leaves.
This task we worked on the hedge again, and also along the path from the car park. We also continued rebuilding the fence using Tom’s fencing tools, and it doesn’t look to bad. Good job everyone.
Last year we did some work with the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside (The Wildlife Trust for short) on creating habitat for willow tit. This task is partly a continuation of that work but also a continuation of our work to extend the reed beds at Doffcocker Lodge LNR.
Willow tits have been present at Doffcocker, to some degree, for a number of years but not in any significant numbers. Willow tit’s, including sub-species, have an extensive range covering Europe and other sub-arctic areas with estimated numbers of 175-253 million. However, since the 1970s the population sizes of these birds in the UK has fallen by around 83% and were Red-listed in in 2022. Habitat deterioration is thought to be the main cause of these changes; competition from other similar species and predation could also be a factor.
So, what does willow tit conservation involve? Willow tit’s like to create nest holes in rotten trees in wet willow carr and fen like habitats. But there aren’t enough rotten trees around for them. To give them a hand we took some old, dead branches and attached them to living trees, partly burying the ends of the branches in the ground. Over time the attached branches will rot and soften and the willow tits will be able to excavate nest holes in them. The photo at the top of the page shows a willow tit and the nest it created at Doffcocker a few years ago.
So, that’s the background on willow tits, and there are photos below from that task as week as today’s task. The work to extend the reed beds involved cutting back the willow. You can find more information on our reed bed work on these posts from previous years.
mithills Hall is one of the oldest and best preserved manor houses in the North West of England. The buildings have been built, rebuilt, added to and remodelled over several centuries; the chapel is said to have been originally established in 792 AD and rebuilt in 1520.
BCV’s involvement doesn’t go quiet that far back, but over the last couple of decades we have removed rhododendron and re-surfaced footpaths. Today we were helping the Smithills Hall Nature Trail Volunteers to do both.
The group have been operating since the beginning of 2025 and have been cutting back rhodies ever since, but they were having problems getting rid of the vast amount of brash and cuttings. Luckily BCV have a chipper which we got through the Feeling Chipper fund (Caroline will probably correct me on the details), and with our chipper we made some in roads on the mountains of material. Two groups working together for a common purpose, if only the rest of the world would do the same.
28th December 2025 We’ve teamed up with the Smithills group, partly because they are such a great team but also to do some work on a long forgotten and neglected pond. We think the pond was created in the 1980s, but that is just a guess. One end has been closed off with a dam to hold water but leaflitter has caused the pond to silt up quite badly. As we can’t get a digger in to dredge out the silt what we are doing instead is to removed some of the vegetation, overhanging trees and deadfalls first, then later in the year make the dam bigger. This should raise the water level.
There are an estimated 15,000 invasive species in the UK, 49 of those species are considered to be harmful to wildlife, and one of those species makes up one of out bread and butter tasks – Rhododendron ponticum. People ask ‘Why do you kill those plants, they’re nice, they have pretty flowers?’ Pretty flowers.. hmm… let’s see
The name Rhododendron translates as “Rose Tree”, ponticum refers to the plant’s home territory around the Black Sea (Latin name Ponticum Sinum). It is a member of the Ericaceae family, the same family as heather and bilberry, which explains why it likes acid soils.
Rhododendron was first introduced to Britain in 1763 from Gibraltar and was soon firmly installed in throughout the country in the ornamental gardens of stately homes. The fashion for this insidious threat continued up to the mid 1890s with R. ponticum becoming the favoured rootstock for grafting and cultivation. But a series of harsh Victoria winters wiped out many evergreen species, including some of the less hardy rhododendron. The remainders soon reverted back to their wild state, and as many country manors fell into disuse and management of stately grounds declined, the rhodys spread. Armed with an array of phytochemical weaponry and unimpeded by our native wildlife, Rhododendron ponticum soon began to dominate the countryside. BCV have seen the effects of this first hand at sites such as the Anderton Centre and Ravenden Clough, both sites were once the grounds of country estates, both sites were overrun with rhodys once left to their own devices.
2007 first Anderton resi.
What makes our enemy so deadly? To start with its roots, stems, leaves, flowers, pollen and nectar are loaded with grayanotoxins, a cocktail of phenols and diterpenes that have a range of toxic properties including anti-viral and anti-fungal properties. How R. ponticum employs these chemicals is still open to debate. One theory is that the grayanotoxins kill the mycorrhizal fungi the grows on the roots of any competing plants, preventing those plants absorbing essential nutrients such as phosphorus. Another theory is that the toxins kill soil fauna such as worms and microbes which consequently inhibits nutrient cycling and availability of nutrients to other species. The theories surrounding methods of dispersal for grayanotoxins are equally as diverse. Researchers argue that toxins enter the soil via roots; by leachate from decaying leaf litter; by runoff from the plants leaves and stems and also by air. There are other theories that claim the toxic soil effects of rhodys are overstated and the likely cause of their dominance is that they shade out other species and out-compete them for nutrients and pollinating insects.
The toxicity of rhodys is beyond question. In addition to their damaging effects on habitats no native insect can survive nibbling rhody leaves, sheep and horses can die from eating them, and even humans have been harmed. There are records, dating back to 400 BC, of honey made from rhododendron nectar adversely affecting people who eat it. Apparently it has both hallucinogenic and laxative effects on the sufferer, so it’s not something you want to spread on your toast in the morning. Surprisingly the bees are immune to rhody toxins.
What other survival strategies to rhodys use? Well, they can spread both vegetatively, such as rooting at points where branches touch the ground, and also by seed. It takes a rhody between 12 and 20 years to mature and produce flowers, each of those flowers can generate as many as 3000 seeds each, that means a good sized shrub can produce around 7,000,000 seeds per year. The seeds are distributed by wind and can travel up to 500 metres from the parent. Winter Hill near Belmont shows just how effective this method of propagation can be, with rhody seedlings scattered across the hillside many hundreds of metres from the nearest mature individuals.
And the bad news doesn’t stop there. Rhododendron also spread a deadly fungus, Phytothora ramorum or Sudden Oak Death. First identified in California the fungus appeared in the UK in 2003 and is arguably now the greatest threat to our woodlands and heathlands. Rhododendron is responsible for the extinction of 150 native British species in the last 100 years. As more habitat is destroyed by the encroachment of rhododendron the more species suffer- trees, mosses, ferns, insects, amphibians, mammals, birds, nothing is unaffected. Pretty flowers? No.
Although we started this task on Winter Hill sometime in 2010, the British Mountaineering Council (BMC) have also been keeping up the fight for the last few years. It’s a big job as rhodys have spread extensively across the hillside, and unfortunately the fires that ravaged Winter Hill in 2018 missed this area otherwise our work would have been done. Best wishes ad thanks to BMC for all of the work they have done over the years.
The Anderton Centre was built in 1990 on the site of Anderton New Hall. Anderton New Hall was built in the 1870s to replace Lady Hall which itself was demolished when Lower Rivington Reservoir was constructed in the 1850s, Anderton New hall survived until the 1930 when the derelict building was demolished. Lady Hall, which may have been built in the 1600s was located near what is now the A673 at the bottom end of Lower Rivington Reservoir. The Lady Hall was built to replace Anderton Old Hall which was present on a site near Old Hall Farm not far from Crown Lane, Horwich. The Old Hall dated back to around 1281 and may have been demolished around the time of the Civil War.
The areas around the Anderton Centre are largely man made: farms, reservoirs, tree plantations, fields and ponds, but they have become home to wide range of wild species from crows to cormorants, from rabbits to roe deer. BCV’s involvement at the Anderton Centre began in January 2007, at the time the site was dominated by rhododendron. It took us 4 years to clear the terraced grounds which are now used for outdoor activities such as archery and climbing.
It’s 2025 and we’re back at Anderton again for our usual summer tasks of balsam eradication and dry stone walling, with a little bit of hedge trimming for variety. Balsam bashing on the hottest days of the year is hard, tiring work, the heat and humidity draining your energy without mercy. But bit by bit we are getting the balsam under control; this year there was less that last year, next year there should be even less. Find out more about balsam in this handy beginners guide.
For walling we moved to the south side for a change where sections of walls had been knocked down by either people or cattle. With Rivington Reservoir being very low it was easier to find stone for building than usual. We repaired several sections but there’s still plenty left to fix.
And finally, James is 21 this year and we celebrated with a cake and various gifts from socks to books. Happy birthday, James.
That’s done for another year, we would like thank the Anderton Centre management and staff for having us back; Tom, and Caroline for organising; Lynn and Trish for cooking; finally thanks to all who turned out to help out. Other resi’s are available here.
Dunscar Wood is a relatively new woodland near Egerton, Bolton. The wood occupies 5.7 hectares of what was formerly green fields which were bought by the Woodland Trust in 1998 as part of their millennial Woodlands on Your Doorstep project. Old maps do show a small patch of woods in the area but not of any great size or significance. You can find other posts about the work we’ve done at Dunscar here and here.
Today’s task was a different aspect of woodland management form planting and thinning. Instead of managing the trees themselves we were managing what grows between them, in this case Himalayan balsam. You can find out more about balsam and why we spend so much time getting rid of it on yet another post (sorry) here.
For the last couple of years we have been trying to reduce the presence of balsam, and it looks like we are actually succeeding to some extent; the areas that last year were thick with balsam are now a bit more sparse, but work still needs to continue. This session, however, was cut short by heavy rain.
Thanks to Caroline and Tom for organising, and for all of the other work they but into running the group. Also thanks to everyone who turned.
