Bovey Valley Barbastelle Bats – what next?

Back in the summer of 2019, the five-year Lottery funded Moor than meets the eye scheme was brought to a close with a big Legacy Celebration at Manaton. It was reported that over 150 people listened to “presentations from a range of people who have been involved in the scheme from partner organisations to project leaders. One of the common threads that came out of the afternoon was the huge impact we have made on caring for our wild andRead more

Reservoir Blogs …No.3

Armed with 500 plug plants and a small inflatable boat, aquatic specialists from Frog Environmental recently made a return visit to the reservoir in Yarner Wood to assess the success of the restoration works started in December 2018. It’s not often you see a small boat on the reservoir, but working on the water is all in a day’s work for this specialist team, and simply the best method for making checks on the newly installed floating islands. These vegetatedRead more

End of an Era

As many of you will be aware the Moor than meets the eye partnership scheme draws to a close later this year and the EcoSkills graduate trainee programme has come to an end… All together 15 of the 17 trainee Conservation Assistants who participated in the project, based here at Yarner, are employed in the conservation sector with 6 working in Devon / Eastern Cornwall – a wonderful legacy  for both the project and for the individuals concerned.  Congratulations toRead more

Surveying Butterflies – A Report from the Field

From 1st April to 30th September every year, volunteers all over the country conduct a Butterfly Transect study on a weekly basis. What is that you may well ask?  Well, in simple terms, its a weekly recording of butterfly numbers and species within a defined area, which has to be repeated exactly.  The records produced are sent to the United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS), from which numbers and trends in number of UK butterflies can be analysed on aRead more

Soils go live at East Dartmoor NNR!

As many of us know, there is more to soil than meets the eye – and indeed, the answer really does lie in the soil.  The soils in the East Dartmoor area have been evolving for several thousand years. During the last Ice Age, this landscape was not glaciated, but tundra conditions prevailed and more recently, human influences, through land use changes have altered the soils. This is a perfect place to explore how soils vary across the landscape. WithRead more

King of Spring Returns

May is a month already bustling with weird and wonderful traditional customs celebrating Spring, so was there room in the calendar for a new one? Andy Bailey from Dartmoor’s Moor than meets the eye scheme believes so. On Sunday 19th at 11am, a small crowd started to gather at the entrance to Yarner Wood to mark the start of the Spring Woodland Festival. Andy was joined by a giant flying pied flycatcher, a band of merry musicians and colourful flockRead more