Task day volunteers at Adel Dam

Most of us volunteers at Yorkshire Wildlife trust take part in Task Days, doing a wide and seasonal variety of important tasks on the specific reserves we help to manage. My local reserve is the recently rewilded Barlow Common.

Many of our Barlow volunteers also help out at other reserves, and I thought it was about time I had a look elsewhere to see the challenges faced on other reserves and to meet the volunteers.

I didn’t want to go to one of the bigger or more well-known sites. Adel Dam appeals as it’s on the edge of Leeds, a city more usually renowned for its nightlife than its wildlife. Adel is relatively old too, in contrast to Barlow, having been a dam for water power long before the Victorians planted most of the magnificent mature trees we see today. Pete Gurney (YWT Reserves Assistant - West), our Task Day Leader, pointed out many locally important examples as we went round. Adel Dam has been managed as a nature reserve since 1968 and, whilst not exactly ancient, you can see many features normally found in our precious temperate rainforests, such as a variety of ferns and lichens and vigorous vegetation at ground level. But the forest is not the only thing that makes it special, as we will find out later.      

Getting started

Having found our meeting place at the Mercure Leeds Parkway, I was delighted to find that YWT volunteers have free parking on task days, so thanks to the people at Mercure. The second thing I found was that I had forgotten my wellies. This brought back memories of the last time I was round this way, running the Eccup 10 miler. That day I forgot my running shoes, but luckily I was meeting an old friend with the same foot size and a spare pair. Today, I was saved by Pete, who keeps a variety of sizes in his van. Pete was leading the day and we were joined by four other volunteers - Mark, John, Mick and Alex.

Meet the volunteer - Alex Casey

Alex is one of our younger Task Day volunteers. Unlike me, he brings his own wellies. As with many of our volunteers, Alex would love to get into conservation as a career. He fits in volunteering at three sites (Adel Dam, Hetchell Wood and Kirkstall Valley) around his day job. In contrast to his job where he can’t wait for the day to end, he is always thinking our Task Days are not long enough! With an RHS (Royal Horticulture Society) qualification gained at Craven college, he has also volunteered at the National Trust, but the YWT is where he has found what he is looking for. The woodland work he has been doing has inspired him to start studying arboriculture and broaden his horizons with our YWT Volunteer training programme.

The Reserve

As we walked into the reserve, Pete told me of the reserve’s history and its relationship to the adjoining Golden Acre park. Golden Acre park is a 1930’s ornamental garden, at one time touted as the “Kew of the North”. It also housed a zoo with its own railway. Not surprisingly this meant it had once been planted with invasive species, upstream of Adel Dam. The impact can be seen at Adel to this day with breakouts of American Skunk Cabbage. Although there’s a national collection of rhododendrons at Golden Acre, the volunteers have eradicated around 99% of the rhododendrons found growing in Adel Dam itself, and they need to be vigilant as Golden Acre produces a lot of seed, meaning the species could quickly spread and crowd out the native plants. Walking into the reserve, we come to a shaded area with benches where people can picnic and groups can meet. Pete outlines our plan for the day which is to walk around the main path and clear any excessive growth with a couple of stops to tackle Himalayan balsam.

The tools

At Barlow, we use mainly modern tools such as loppers, bow saws and clippers, but at Adel Dam we also have some older tools - Garden slashers and Billhooks, which I reckon must be part of the Victorian legacy. As we walk around, the differing tools allow us to tackle the wide variety of vegetation situations we find. The Billhook is particularly good with bramble, once you learn to use it at the right angle. Apparently the type of Bilhook we use at Adel is known as a “Brushing hook” or “Dunse Slasher”

First Balsam

Soon we come to our first balsam patch, barely visible from a hide on a small pond, a pond that was dug out by a contractor who was supposed to be creating scrapes. The balsam here was relatively small, but quite woody, and in contrast to Barlow, we had to look hard to find some of it. The terrain was boggy with lots of fallen trees and little room to move in places. Frogs were quite a common sight. It would have been quite easy to get lost in the dense undergrowth but it was quite satisfying to clear an area without seeing a mountain of inaccessible pink heads still towering above us. It is important to remove Balsam as it grows fast and can quickly dominate an ecosystem, leaving little room for native species and the other species that depend on them, for instance, specialist bees. Pete explained that until relatively recently we would have found a nationally important population of native white-clawed crayfish on the reserve, but an outbreak of crayfish plague had wiped out the population. This is despite the absence of invasive crayfish species that act as carriers for the plague.

Postscript - After I submitted the first draft of this article for Pete’s scrutiny, he got back to me with some really good news. An Environmental Agency survey of the Beck upstream from Adel Dam had discovered healthy white-clawed crayfish, clinging on. This raises the possibility that they may, one day, make their way downstream beyond the dam. . However, one set of muddy boots or even a dog going in and out of the water on an upstream walk,could kill off this fragile population very quickly. I will not apologise for, once again, emphasising the Check Clean Dry message. This applies to your boots too!

Second Balsam

The next stop was a more obvious Balsam infestation. This time, it was slightly off-reserve in an adjacent reed bed. In this case, the farmer and YWT have a good relationship, so we do each other favours and co-operate with incidents involving, for instance, fallen trees. In this case, removing the Balsam from the reed is beneficial for both of us, and for the reed bed.

As we piled up the balsam, we were careful to tramp all over and squash it as we moved around. This developed into a new dance - the “Balsam Bash”...

The Boardwalk saga

On the way back to the reserve entrance we crossed the boardwalk that is a crucial part of the circular route around the reserve. Despite being new, it has already been subject to the ravages of nature after 3 huge trees fell across it in late 2023. The new boardwalk was lifted out of the ground, at quite an angle.

The whole section needed to be reset and levelled, not to mention the tree trunks that had to be shifted. It took the team about 5 Task Days to repair it. Most of the team involved are pictured below. As we checked the boardwalk area, visitors walked past, admiring the scenery, totally unaware of either the recent drama, or the drama yet to come...

The Boardwalk saga … again

In the same breath as Pete told me the good news about the crayfish, he told me the bad news about the boardwalk. Recent winds at the end of August had brought another tree down onto the boardwalk. This time the damage was much worse. Not only was the boardwalk lifted, it was also ripped apart. Once again it will need repairing, starting at the next Task Day. You can see the latest damage below.

As you can see, it takes a pretty dedicated team to keep the reserve in good condition for the wildlife and safe for the people who enjoy visiting. Not only do they have to keep the paths clear, do the balsam bash and other routine tasks, they also have to deal with events such as unexpected tree falls, which take a lot of time from planned projects.

Just before publication, Pete mailed me with some more good news: “The boardwalk is now fixed - wahey!” I could feel the joy. I’ll leave you with news of one of Pete’s other challenges though... Invasive grey squirrels continue to break into the tool shed and eat any wellies they find in there. I was lucky that Pete kept a few pairs in the van.