On May 7th received an email from Veryan Jones MSc, Senior Environment Officer with Cornwall Council. (I already knew Veryan a little, as her parents both sang in a singing group I’d joined, and who became involved in the replanting of Broad Wood from January 21st 199? onwards, and later were active members of the committee of the Friends of Stara Woods.

“I was wondering whether you’d be happy for some of our team to come and visit Stara Woods on 17thJune?….” She went on to explain that she was planning an away day for her team, who work on Nature Recovery for Cornwall, that day. The email continued : “We are focussing our away day on learning more about one of our priority rivers, the Lynher.” The plan was to start the day up on the moor, near the source of the Lynher, work down visiting various points of interest, and visiting Stara before ending the day at Rilla Mill. Veryan wanted them to look at a community woodland project and said “I thought Stara would be perfect to show them.” How could we refuse!

July 17th arrived, with typical Cornish weather, mist and mizzle, fortunately light by the time they reached us. Simon, Jen & Pete, & myself greeted them at the Stara Bridge entrance and after introductions, Simon led them up to the Barn, which gave him the opportunity to point out various aspects of the management of the the woods and our aims for the future, Jen and myself were driven up by Pete in the Landrover – me because I couldn’t walk that far, Jen to carry the dormouse displays.

The rest of this newsletter is about the visit, in the form of reports from Jen, Simon and myself. When everyone arrived at the Barn, it was my role to describe how I came to purchase 3 woods, then called Colquite, Broad & Treovis woods, in January 2003, and the renaming of them collectively as Stara Woods as the Friends of Stara Woods came into being, Simon’s to talk about and answer questions about the management, aims etc., and Jen’s to introduce the dormouse project and describe the work she’s done with her trainees & volunteers. Here’s what Simon & Jen wrote up about the visit

Simon:
The 18 visitors from the Cornwall Nature Partnership are all helping to implement the Cornwall Nature Recovery Strategy. This strategy is Cornwall’s response to the Internation 30 by 30 plan first launched at COP 15 back in 2022. Over 190 countries have agreed to protect and restore 30% of their land and water for Nature Conservation by 2030. This is a particularly ambitious target for the UK, which admits to being one of the most ‘Nature Depleted’ countries in the world. Cornwall is one of the first parts of the UK to produce a Recovery Strategy which outlines how we can take positive steps to improve or restore Nature Conservation over large parts of the county and its surrounding coast. This is our contribution to the 30 by 30 initiative.

The Cornwall team did a great job undertaking exhaustive consultation right across the county and have produced a really positive plan for making significant improvements within the next 4 years and thereafter. Using innovative mapping and GIS tools, it is possible to discern the best parts of Cornwall for wildlife, and the level of protection that these areas need. The Strategy also identifies priority areas for the restoration of habitats or the creation of new ones. This is a critical piece of land use planning which will influence policy makers and grant bodies in the future.

The team visited Stara Woods to see an important wildlife area that needs ongoing protection, but also to look at the Lynher Valley as a whole, where there is considerable scope for wildlife enhancement through improving connectivity and targeted management.

Jen:
The visit by members of the Local Nature Partnership Team was, in many ways, a wake-up call to the recognition of how important a relatively small area like Stara Woods can be for preserving and enhancing the natural environment. Cornwall needs many more places like Stara to provide both a home and a stepping stone for many kinds of wildlife as part of a connecting web across the county and beyond.

The fact that we are able to support such an elusive, and increasingly rare, animal like the Hazel Dormouse shows Stara’s importance and the need to preserve and even increase its potential by caring for the woods and doing what we can to maintain and enhance the kind of woody and scrubby habitat that they can thrive in.

But the woods at Stara do not exist in isolation. Neighbouring land owners provide and maintain that all-important connectivity through hedgerow and copse to other small woodlands, a complicated network that allows wildlife like the dormouse to move around and avoid in-breeding.

The dormice have always been here and yet we were not really aware of them until the finding of some hazelnuts (opened by dormice in their own, unique way) up in the leat in Colquite during the early years.

This was followed by the Great Nut Hunt & Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in September 2009.

Anne:
I can’t resist interrupting here with an extract from October 2009’s Newsletter about that event! Hard work to organise, but such fun!

All who attended had a really enjoyable afternoon. Jen set up a very interesting and informative display about the dormouse, with examples of the signs to look for in the hazelnuts we gathered. While the intrepid nut-hunters were given instructions and sent off by Jen to survey areas of the woods of their choice, the rest of us set out the tea-table, which was laden with a fabulous array of home-made cakes, dormouse biscuits and jam & cream scones, all served on china plates and PROPER china cups and saucers! After greeting all comers, the Dormouse (Shelby) then snoozed quietly while the Mad Hatter (wonderfully portrayed by Bunny) popped up to surprise the nut-hunters and invite them to ‘his’ party! When they returned, Jen recorded the results for the different areas of the woods, and everyone made their way to the tea-table, to be met with the classic cry of ‘No room, no room!’. Fortunately, Alice (Liz )was there to respond with ‘Nonsense – there’s plenty of room!’, so everyone enjoyed copious quantities of tea and cakes, despite the Hatter’s regular instruction to ‘All change places now!’ Sorry, Jen -please continue!

JEN (after interruption!)
On the more serious side, that’s when we discovered that dormice were present in other parts of the woods (and in our neighbour’s) so with a new license from natural England in hand, we could begin to organise some serious nest box making in 2011, first up in Colquite and then in 2012 and with support from the Caradon Area Heritage project, boxes were installed in Treovis, then Broad woods.

With this hot weather, we have yet to see how many we will find this year (slightly up on this time last year). Our boxes only cover a very small percentage of the area of land we call Stara so it is but a snapshot. But an important one because if we get it right for dormice, it will be good for many other kinds of wildlife.