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In the March
Chairman: Graham Virgo The Gazette now has its own email address: email: GamlingayGazette@tesco.net The Gazette is produced on a PC using Microsoft Word and Microsoft Publisher. If you are providing a disc, and are not using Microsoft Word, please save your file as a TEXT file not in your word processor’s native format. Thank you. Your letters and items for articles can also be dropped in at the Village College Library. Just mark them for The Gazette. Every care is taken to ensure the accuracy of the items included but the views expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the Committee.
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The first phase of a long-term vision of enlarging and linking some of our local woods together is about to take shape with an exciting land purchase by the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire. It can, however, only be achieved if the costs of buying the arable land and converting it to broadleaved woodland can be raised in time. Packed meetings in both Gamlingay and Gt Gransden halls during January heard about the Trust's ambitious plans to restore some of the native woodland that was cleared from the boulder-clay soils of this district in Anglo-Saxon times, leaving the fragments that are today's precious woods - Gamlingay, Waresley/Gransden, Hayley, Buff and Potton Woods in particular. With the cooperation of landowners and the involvement of other local interests including schoolchildren, the Wildlife Trust hopes not only to enlarge the woods where feasible but also to provide wildlife-friendly corridors of new woodland between them. Brian Eversham, the Trust's Conservation Director, explained to the receptive audiences how fragmentation of the original natural forest has, over the centuries, confined many scarce woodland species of plants and animals to isolated pockets within an intensively farmed landscape. Species such as bluebell, oxlip, various orchids, harvest mouse, white admiral and purple hairstreak butterflies - to name but a few - had little or no chance of spreading from one wood to another without a viable habitat connection. Furthermore, the relatively small size of our surviving woods provides limited scope for the woodland flora and fauna to adapt to the vagaries of our climate. The more extensive Wildwood, the prehistoric forest, had a mosaic of habitats in which a rich diversity of species could exist. Reserves Manager, Lorna Parker, graphically illustrated how these ancient boulder-clay woods might be linked and enlarged by stages over, say, the next two centuries - enriching our familiar landscape, enhancing the wildlife populations of a scarce habitat and, equally importantly, providing an attractive series of woodland walks across the countryside for local people. It is envisaged that wide strips of land between woods will be fenced then developed as broadleaved woodland, comprising a central grassy ride bordered by native trees and shrubs such as oak, ash, field maple and hazel. Existing hedgerows and other features will be incorporated where possible. The Wildlife Trust's immediate purchase will form the first part of a link between its nature reserves of Gamlingay and Waresley/ Gransden Woods. Hopefully, the Heritage Lottery Fund will be grantaiding 75% of the cost of buying and managing the land, provided the balance can be raised in time. The Wildlife Trust has launched a local Appeal to raise £21,000 by 21 March. For how you can help please see the pledge form. Send your pledge form to Paul Carruthers, 23 Northfield Close (Tel 650 636) or Brian Merrill, 5 Maple Court as these are our village co-ordinators.
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