Dorset BNG at Piddle

The Piddle is one of only about 200 chalk streams in the world, and home to the

endangered white-clawed crayfish. Thomas Hardy drew on the valley for his

fiction, and made Bere Regis the Kingsbere of Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

The river runs through our land at Bere Regis. Maize fields, woodland and

floodplain all drain straight into it, and the soil and nutrients that wash out travel

on to Poole Harbour. We're stopping that by breaking up the land drains,

damming a ditch and digging three ponds to hold the water where it falls. In a

second phase, we plan to dig out the spoil bank left by old dredging and a raised

farm track, so the river can spill onto its floodplain again.

In the woods, we're felling a Douglas fir plantation, replanting native

broadleaves and cutting glades that suit nightjar and woodlark, both recorded

nearby.

Where maize grew, scrub and grassland will take over 21 hectares. We're also

enhancing eight hectares of floodplain wetland, five of woodland and threequarters

of a mile of hedgerow.

A Conservation Covenant with Fera Science Limited secures the scheme for 30

years.