Maintaining the canal bank

An unexpected task today for the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. Pete messaged me last night with an urgent maintenance task that had come up.

A few weeks ago I spent a day working on a section of canal to displace water voles. Although this sounds counter-intuitive to conservation at first, we need to make sure that voles don’t make burrows in this part of the canal because there’s some engineering work due to take place there.

So we need to cut the vegetation right back in a 15m area either side of the works. This was a major job and took all day initially because there was a lot of scrub.

Unfortunately, it hadn’t been maintained recently during the growing season, and it was in danger of becoming overgrown.

Luckily, it was a pretty straightforward task with the brush cutter. I went up and down the banks, and Pete cleared the debris. Hopefully, this keeps the area clear for a few more weeks until the growing season ends.