Melbourn
Following a successful start in Meldreth, the Group obtained funding from the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Biodiversity Partnership to improve a small stretch of the river in Melbourn. Work started in the river in January 2009 and the group now holds working parties in Melbourn approximately once every six weeks.
As well as in-river restoration, a group of four willows were pollarded in the Spring of 2009 on the advice of the ecology officer, so as to prolong their life and provide an important riverside habitat for a wide variety of wildlife. As the Group’s ethos is conservation and restoration, as much wood as possible from the pollarding was used in bank stabilisation and in the building of new revetments. The places where we have used willow logs to stabilise the bank will provide a stable entry point to the river for dogs. It is good to see that the pollarded willows are now showing substantial regrowth.
As the new revetments are created they are being sown with a specialised mixture of native wildflowers and grasses and in other places planted with native species such as sedges and marsh marigolds, which serve as new habitat and also provide stability to the newly created bank.