A year ago, we wrote a blog concluding the end of the first phase of the Severn Treescapes Project and introduced part of the second phase – the Dead Wood Society. Our Treescapes project started in September of 2022 and was a Trees Call to Action Fund project. We built upon the first three years of the project and have spent this last year focusing on deadwood habitats and the species that rely on them. Up to a fifth of all species in the UK need these deadwood habitats for at least part of their lifecycle.  

One of the Dead Wood Society’s main aims was looking at baselining orchards within the three counties area. We offered these surveys to landowners we worked with during the first phase of the project and have completed 38 surveys. We wouldn’t have been able to complete these surveys without our incredible team of volunteers across the three counties. Over 30 volunteers have trained with us and are out completing our surveys in both landowner orchards and in community orchards found within the Treescapes area. A huge thank you to all our wonderful volunteers for putting in time to support our surveying. We’re really looking forward to continuing these surveys and developing them further in the next phase.   

We were also keen to teach people about the wonders of the saproxylic world and worked with Keith Alexander, a renowned expert on the conservation of terrestrial invertebrates in the UK, with a special interest in saproxylic invertebrates and veteran trees, to host 3 different workshops. These were some of our most popular events, with spaces selling out almost immediately! 

We were lucky to find some mistletoe marble moth evidence at one workshop and some noble chafer frass at another! These are both really important species to the project and ones we plan on working with a lot in the next phase of the project.  

Our ‘orchards through the season’ workshops continued for a third successful year, hosting eight different workshops across the three counties. 

Four of the workshops were in partnership with Wye Valley National  Landscape and we’re grateful we were able to work with them again to deliver these workshops. We worked with some of the same landowners as previous years and some new locations including the Three Counties Showground in Malvern, and it was great to work on some of their collection of fruit trees.    

As this National Lottery phase of the Dead Wood Society comes to a close, we’re delighted to announce we’ve successfully been selected as one of Natural England’s Species Recovery Programme projects as part of the government's Wild Again: Restoring England's Wildlife initiative. This project will run from 2026 right up until 2029, with a host of new workshops and volunteer opportunities to get involved with.  

Our key species for this project are: noble chafer beetle, orchard toothcrust fungus, mistletoe marble moth and red-horned cardinal click beetle. Throughout the next three years we will be working closely with partners such as People’s Trust for Endangered Species, Cardiff University, Aberystwyth University, Hartpury University, Gloucestershire Orchard Trust and the Vale Landscape Heritage Trust.  

Through the next few years we will still have our incredible Trees and Woodland Advisers able to give advice and support to people wanting to plant more trees across the three counties as well as new support workshops and advice for managing traditional orchards.   

As always, if you’d like to find out more information or would like to get involved with the project, please do get in touch with us severntreescapes@gloucestershirewildlifetrust.co.uk