Latest News

Dear fellow member

Geoffrey’s funeral will take place on 2nd March 2021 at Worthing Crematorium.

Covid-19 restrictions will be in force limiting the number of people who can attend but the family is keen that his friends do attend, if possible.

Anyone wishing to attend should contact Geoffrey’s daughter, Tanya, by ‘phone on 07941 968560 or by email on tanya.jones@gmx.co.uk to get further details regarding attending the funeral and so that she can ensure that the limit on number of attendees is not exceeded.

More details can be found on the Funeral Director’s website here, including details on how to watch the funeral service via a webcast.  The family have requested no flowers and ask that, should you wish, please plant something in his memory or make a charitable donation to The Woodlands Trust.

Rover P6 owners 
The family are looking for any Rover P6 owners in the local area who would be willing to escort Geoffrey on his final journey.  Please contact them on the contact details given above if you are interested.

We are sorry to announce that Geoffrey Moore passed away on Saturday 30th January 2021.

Geoffrey used to be a Trustee of the Society and its Chairman for five years, from 2005 to 2010.  Geoffrey was also the volunteer tree warden for Storrington Parish for a time and, when the Society had such a position, was the certificated chainsaw operative for the Society.

There is an article on Geoffrey on page 7 of the Spring 2002 issue (No.54) of the Society newsletter, which you can access on this website via the History and Archive tab, which describes what an eventful life Geoffrey lived.

Geoffrey used to live in Hampers Lane but he spent the latter years of his life in a nursing home in Westergate, near Fontwell.  This is where he passed away, aged 79.  His daughter was by his side.

After several years leading and providing the refreshments for the Sandgate Park conservation mornings, John and Jan Dugnolle have decided that they would now like someone else to take on these responsibilities.

Ideally it would be someone or a couple of people (one to lead the work party and one to sort out refreshments) who live next to the park but John has indicated that for the foreseeable future he could still store the tools and wheelbarrows, so don’t be put off if you live a bit further away.

The person who leads the work party will:

• liaise with Horsham District Council Parks and Countryside on what tasks they would like the conservation morning volunteers to carry out;
• be responsible for the tools, including approaching HDC when tools require maintenance or replacement;
• ensure that volunteers are signed in at each conservation morning(for insurance purposes);
• carry out a risk assessment for the morning and ensure that all volunteers are briefed on any risks and how to use the tools safely;
• provide a report on conservation work done / planned to the trustee committee; and
• contribute to the Society Annual Report on work done and attendance numbers at the conservation mornings, and any planned future work. This includes a short presentation to the AGM.

The person providing the refreshments will be responsible for bringing along the hot water, tea, coffee, milk, sugar and any other drinks, cakes / biscuits and the drinking cups.  The cost of provisions can be claimed back from the Treasurer.

If you are interested in taking on either (or both) of these vital roles please contact the Society.

As of August 2020 conservation mornings at Sandgate Park are still suspended though they could restart under strict Covid-19 precautions.  If and when they do restart during the Covid-19 pandemic period it is likely that no refreshments will be provided because the sharing of food and drink increases the risk of passing on virus.

Ken Guiver died in July 2020.  Ken had been a member of the Society since the early 1970s.  He was a Committee member for many years and also had the role of Care and Reclamation Officer from the late 1970s to the early 2000s, when he helped organise the conservation mornings (or ‘field days’ as they were called then) and produced reports for the newsletters.

Brian Burns has supplied these photographs of Ken.

Did you notice in late summer that large parts of the heather on Sullington Warren were not purple with flower but a reddish brown? This was the result of a massive heather beetle infestation of this section of the Warren.

The larva of the beetle is found feeding on the leaves, stem and bark of heather plants from June through until early September. If the number of larvae are very high this can result in the heather being killed and this is what happened on parts of Sullington Warren last summer.

Recovery plan

Charlie Cain, our National Trust Area Ranger, has developed a plan to tackle the heather beetle infestation and regenerate the heather.  He has asked Sandgate Conservation Society to help him let local people know about the plan so that they understand why the heather beds are being managed in such a seemingly destructive way and what they can do to help the heather restoration.

In late summer/autumn last year the National Trust employed a contractor to cut wide strips through the most badly affected areas. The cuttings from these areas were pilled into a large heap in the hope that any adult beetle collected as part of the mowing operation would be contained and killed with the heap, to reduce the risk of a massive infestation of other parts of the site in the following year.

These mowed strips were cut in such a manner as to leave “living room carpet” sized patches of uncut dead heather stems. The National Trust intents burning off these patches, one by one, this winter before the heather comes back into active growth. They are doing them one by one to avoid the risk of the fires getting out of control and threatening the unique ecology of the rest of the site.

Burning operation – why and when?

The National Trust feels this burning will have two advantages for the site:

• Heather seed needs light to hit the mineral soil surface to stimulate germination. The seed is extremely fire tolerant so the seed bank within the soil will be unaffected by the burning but after the burning it will be exposed to the light to encourage good germination rates in the spring.
• The remaining heather beetle population in the affected areas will, at this time of year, be an adult beetle hibernating under the moss layer where the larva lived and fed. Burning these areas has the potential to reduce the number of adults that will survive the winter and thereby reduce the risk to the remaining heather on the site next summer.

The beetles come out of hibernation in mid-February to March when the mean temperature is above 9°C, so it is important that this burning operation is carried out before then, if possible, to have the best chance of controlling the heather beetle population.  Studies have also shown that regeneration from burned heather plant is much greater if the operation takes place before the plants try to flourish in the spring.

Where is this happening?

If you enter the Warren from the Heather Way gate and walk straight on towards The Green the affected area is to you left.  (If you enter from Woodpecker Lane it is the area on your right, though there has also been some mowing carried out on the area on the left).

The area to your right, when entering via Heather Way, was attacked by heather beetle in the same way eight or nine years ago.  The National Trust have been doing lots of bits of work over the last six or seven years to re-establish carpets of heather as opposed to the wavy hair grass and Festuca carpets that colonised this area after that infestation. The restoration of this area has mainly been the manual removal of moss, carried out by volunteers, to expose dormant heather seeds to light to stimulate heather seed germination and regrowth.  The hope is that the burning operation will re-establish a heather carpet much more quickly over the areas that were killed last summer than has been achieved on this section, and with less back-breaking effort!

What you can do to help?

The photograph shows what Sullington Warren looked like in August 2010 before the heather beetle infestation.  This is what the National Trust is aiming to get the heather beds looking like again.  All of us who use and enjoy Sullington Warren can help.

Please do not walk across the heather beds or encourage your dogs to run into them.  There are plenty of obvious paths around the heather beds, there are none across them.  Walking across the heather can damage the vegetation, including recovering heather plants, disturb the wildlife (many invertebrates and reptiles, including adders live there – there is also the potential for ground-nesting birds in the spring if the areas were left undisturbed) and cause soil erosion.

Also, there is some evidence that increased soil fertility is exacerbating the heather beetle problem by producing heather growth that the heather beetle larvae finds more nutritious.  Increased nitrogen in the soil also encourages vegetation that competes with heather such as grasses and brambles.  The major source of excessive nitrogen in the soils at Sullington Warren is from dog fouling.  It is really important that dog waste on Sullington Warren is disposed of properly in a waste bin. There are a number of dog waste bins around the Warren including one just a short distance away from the heather beds around The Green, at the Woodpecker Lane entrance.

Over the next few months we will be coppicing and cutting back some of the encroaching trees and shrubs along the paths and fire ride on the Thakeham Road side of the the Warren.

Without grazing by wild herbivores or livestock the process of natural succession means that eventually dense trees and shrubs take over, reducing the variation in habitats that support the widest range of species.  Also, as the trees and shrubs grow close together they grow ‘leggy’ as they compete with each other to reach the light.

By cutting back the trees and shrubs not only are the paths opened up to improve access but also areas of heath can be linked up.   Cutting back a deciduous tree or shrub like holly does not kill it but rather rejuvenates it and creates a bushier plant as it throws up multiple stems from its roots.  These bushier plants provide another habitat, such as nesting sites for some birds.  In the meantime the extra light reaching the ground stimulates the growth of other plants, previously suppressed by the low light levels, which attract butterflies and other insects and which in turn provide food for other species such as birds and bats.

On Saturday we started to clear along the path behind Heatherlands.  As you can see some fairly substantial trees were taken down – these are probably as big as we can fell using hand saws.

Shifting the larger trees usually required some team-work

The small branches and twiggy material, or brash, was burnt – see previous post for an explanation of why we burn.

You can see that the bonfire is contained off the ground in a tray which is standing on corrugated iron sheets.  This is to prevent the ground catching fire, though with the amount of rain recently that seemed unlikely.