The Edge Effect ~ by WoodlandsTV

Transcript

Julian Evans: We're standing on a woodland track which has been well made and is really quite impressive as a track, obviously able to support all the sorts of vehicles that a woodland owner would want to use on it. But it has one serious defect for many of us, because as we look along the track, you can see that it's quite dark, and you can see that on both sides there is very little by way of wildflowers. There are very few shrubs.

When we look into the woodland itself, we can see right down the rows of the trees into the dark center. Clearly that shows us that there is very little between this track and the middle of the woodland.

That means there's going to be very little for the wildlife, the biodiversity, as we call it these days, that many of us so wish to see in our woodlands.

What we want to do this afternoon is to show you the contrast with a woodland edge that brings a lot of wildlife to it. It is what we call in ecology the edge effect. We're now going to move to another site, which is very different from this track, that illustrates just this point. Thank you.

We've now come to our second site, having left that very dark forest track, which, as we'd described, had very little wildlife, had little by way of undergrowth, and was really unattractive to birds, animals, butterflies.

Here we are in a beautiful woodland glade, and not only is the sun shining on my face and, you can see, on this lovely pussy willow, for example, behind me. The warmth is so good for butterflies as well as for wildflowers.

What this site also illustrates is what we mentioned at the previous site about edge effect, because not only is there woodland and big trees behind us here in this picture, but you can see in the foreground that you've got brambles. You have got hawthorns. I've mentioned the pussy willow. That's a birch tree. There's a young oak springing up.

All of these are adding structure to the edge of the woodland. We've got variety of species. We've got variety in structure. We've got a ground layer. You've got a lower canopy. You've got a middle and then an upper canopy.

All of these provide many different niches for wildlife, hence an edge like this in a glade like this is really rich. All woodlands, however small, ought to have at least some areas that have a lot of edge effect, not just trees, but have openings as well.

Indeed, good woodland management includes having the rides opened up in places, whether it's a scallop or whether it's a cross-ride, you'd really open it up to allow the sun in or to encourage this edge effect for all the reasons that we have described.

So in woodland management, yes, you need good tracks. But remember, you can use the track to advantage by opening it up and encouraging this diversity that comes in when you've created a good edge effect.