Island 2000 Trust Blog

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Hello.

Sorry we’ve been away. Things have been tough and there have had to be a lot of changes for a lot of people but here we are,  on this our tenth birthday, ready for the new world of credit-free economics!

And what a day to celebrate! Bon Poisson d’Avril a Tout le Monde!

Spring is sprung and there’s much to do and you’ll be hearing a lot more from us now we’ve steadied the ship.

Just to get things going here’s some marvellous Toothwort from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust Reserve at Eaglehead Copse. This extraordinary spring flower has no chlorophyll and taps instead into tree roots for what it needs ( a lot like the broomrapes that featured on the blog last year). HIWT do a tremendous job managing this beautiful woodland and it is ablaze with spring flowerrs just now.

Yet more finds from the amazing Alverstone Dig continue to emerge. We have just been given a small collection of flint lithics (bits of stone to you and I) struck from hand tools in the dim and distant past. These are now a part of the Alverstone Archive with island 2000 and will be a very useful addition to the material to be studied by experts from around the country over the next 18 months as they try to unravel this extraordinary story.

Hello everyone and sorry we’ve been a bit slow in greeting the New Year but here we are again. Things are of course pretty tough economically the world over just now and  it’s no different for us. The next 3 months will be pretty tough but we’ll be as busy as ever delivering projects as we restructure ourselves to better fit more straightened times.

We’re just about to begin some major wetland works in the Alverstone Marshes SSSI to continue to manage the exciting progress of drier parts of the site from nettle bed to reed bed. We’ll also be finishing off the winter’s work at Bohemia Bog by scraping off old slumped soil from what might be a good bit of the original bog just beneath. Even now in the dead of winter there are bits of that amazing bog flora visible. Here you can see the red of sundews showing through. Of course 2009 is the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and there will be celebrations and events the world over. Interestingly Darwin worked on a study of insectivorous plants including sundews (there is a story that some of his samples may even have come from the Island but it seems more likely that he used the New Forest) and we’ll be marking this with special walks at Bohemia later in the year.

Here’s hoping you have a thoroughly amazing Christmas.

Don’t forget to tune in again next year.

Ooh everyone loves a good trip to the tip, don’t they?  that lovely smug feeling from de-cluttering your life and disposing of your unwanted goods in the proper manner, preferably with a hefty dollop of recycling thrown in.  So staff at Island 2000 were privileged to be given a deluxe tour of both the recycling plant on Forest Road and the landfill site at Lynbottom recently.

Island Waste’s Community Liaison Officer, Lynn Clarke took a group of us around the site to see first hand all the new recycling technology and the gasification chambers, which sound slightly sinister, but when working at full capacity they will produce enough energy to power approx 3,000 homes, simply by burning un-recyclable rubbish and selling the resulting energy to the National Grid.

We were surprised to discover just how much of our domestic rubbish is recycled on the Island.  Although newspapers, magazines, food waste and glass is collected at kerbside, the remainder of recycleable material is extracted at the plant.

Look at this pile of bales of squashed aluminium cans - can you see the face that Island Waste staff have created in the pile in a light-hearted moment?

Only material that cannot be recycled or used to make fuel for gasification is sent on to the landfill site at Lynbottom.  As well as the landfill facility, the Lynbottom site collects garden waste which is turned into high quality garden compost and sold locally.  Kitchen food waste is also collected here and is broken down into a low grade compost material which is used to cover the landfill area at the end of each day.

We also took a quick peep at the birds of prey that are brought onto the site every day and flown to deter seagulls and other vermin from the area.  After having seen all the excellent recycling and waste reduction techniques on the site, it was still pretty daunting to see the vast landfill area in use at Lynbottom.  The current space available in this landfill is due to last until 2015, and Lynn reckons they’ll just about manage it, but what happens after that is anyone’s guess, particularly as Island Waste’s contract ends in 2015.

The message is pretty clear - whatever you throw away will be dealt with responsibly and effectively by Island Waste, who will do their utmost to minimise what goes into landfill, but we also have to do our bit in managing our waste, both in our bins and what we take up to the tip.

We are running a street art project for youngsters in East Cowes to gain drawing, painting and design skills which will result in the creation of new artwork for the hoardings. We’ve started by doing some introductory sessions at Osborne Middle School sketching ideas and letter forms onto large sheets of paper as practice. As you can see, it turned into a real riot of colour. We’re going to be working with the local youth clubs in the coming weeks.

Don’t forget it’s the Big Draw this Saturday 10am-1pm down near St James’ Church East Cowes (see previous post below).

After a shaky start, diverting last-minute from the Yarmouth to the East Cowes ferry, 11 of the Island 2000 crew set off for the New Forest in search of bugs. We were hoping to discover the Medicinal Leech and the Fairy Shrimp. There wouldn’t be much chance of us finding these on our own, but we were met in Lyndhurst by Naomi, an expert in the ecology of temporary ponds which are home to both these species.

Temporary ponds are ones which regularly dry out. Naomi led us to one in a small clearing surrounded by oaks, crab apples and Rowan’s favourite - Wild Service trees. The boggy area was ringed with hoof-prints from thirsty New Forest ponies and it hardly seemed like a pond at all. Unless you were unlucky enough to disappear into one of Kev’s wellington boot prints, it was only a few centimetres deep. Naomi sent three of us out with pond-dipping nets into the marsh and gave us instructions to waggle our boots around in the mud and tepid water.

For a minute or two nothing happened, but soon we started to spot dark eel-like forms swimming and slithering towards the source of the vibrations. These were the Medicinal Leeches we had come to see. Their rasping mouth-parts were now watering at the thought of New Forest pony ankles and the blood of small children from the nearby campsite which were their usual hosts. (Medicinal Leeches are the only leeches in Britain which are able to feed on mamals).

They were amazingly quick. I’d imagined a leech would move slowly like a slug, but that’s quite wrong. Apparently they can even chase their prey across land - I think this applies to worms, but not ponies.

It felt a bit mean to get the hopes up of so many hungry leeches. They often go for months without food and when they reached us they had nothing but rubbery wellies to suck on. Ian at least was more generous. He had ‘forgotten’ to bring his boots, and brushing aside fears of blood-poisoning, squelched out into the mud barefoot. It wasn’t long before each ankle had a bracelet of wriggling leeches round it.

Here’s one making a start. As well as anti-coagulant to keep the blood flowing, leeches apply an anaesthetic and Ian said he didn’t feel them at all.

After lunch at an old New Forest pub, Naomi took us to find the second creature that we had been hoping to see - Fairy Shrimps. Generally these aren’t active at the same time of year as the Medicinal leeches, but the unusual pattern of the seasons this year meant that we were able to see them both. Again, the pond wasn’t something that I would have given a second glance normally. It was just a shallow dip beside a road, maybe 20 metres across. The Fairy Shrimps weren’t hard to find. Naomi just scooped up a trayful of water and with it, dozens of the little branchiopods. They were only a few millimetres long and moved quite sedately like tiny paddle-steamers with their rows of legs milling round rhythmically on each side. Apparently they only exist in 20 ponds in Britain so we felt very privileged to see them.

It was fascinating to hear how sensitive both species are to seemingly slight changes in their environments - temperature, light, acidity, wetting and drying of the ponds, and it became clear how marginal their existence is.

Back on the ferry, our day’s excitement was extended for a few hours when one of the ship’s engines died mid-journey and it had to limp back with us to Southampton. Time to look out of the minibus window and for random thoughts to form. It’s not a big stretch of water, but maybe the isolation that this narrow barrier creates somehow enables the Island’s own microcosm to survive… I didn’t have time to develop this profound thought as the Red Jet had just pulled in and several of us raced off to catch it, leaving behind the others to bring back the minibus.

This banana is 135 Million Yrs old - it’s a new line in high-fibre organics from M&S.

Actually it’s not. It’s a trace fossil - that’s fossilized evidence of something living having been around but not actually any part of the creature. In this case it’s probably a fragment of the burrow made by a gastropod rummaging in the lagoonal mud of the cretaceous IOW. It comes from the fabulous ‘cracker beds’ - a belt of crumbly grey muds halfway between Shepherd’s Chine and Whale Chine famous for its lobster fossils. These are really rare but you can easily find shells and sea urchins amongst the debris at the base of the cliff and along the beach.

The Big Draw – Saturday 18^th October, 10am- 1pm

We are holding another Big Draw event on the blue hoardings near St James’ Church, Church Lane (where we did it last year). The broad theme this year is to create a giant East Cowes Town portrait and is your chance to make your mark on the hoardings.

The Big Draw is a nationwide event which aims to get everyone drawing, it’s fun, free and not about being a superb draughtsman but about having a go, so bring the family and get stuck in. All pens, pencils, papers etc will be provided.

All young children must be accompanied by an adult and if it’s wet we’ll reschedule for another day.