The club are working to preserve and enhance the calcareous grasslands that we have within the clubs boundaries. These are one of the most rapidly diminishing (and least glamorised) environmental areas in Great Britain. We do this through the cutting and bailing of the grass at key times during the year, which as well as encouraging the ground nesting birds (typically Skylarks) helps to encourage the regeneration of a wide range of wild flora –including several types of Orchid.
We have entered into a partnership with “Batscape” an organisation with European funding who help to preserve and enhance a variety of rare bats. One such variety is the protected Horseshoe bat, which we have roosting within our course in unused underground stone mines, which have been appointed a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). With their help we have applied for and received a grant to grill off and monitor the ‘caves’ as well as manage the area immediately surrounding the roost sites in a manner which will encourage the free movement and breeding of the bats.
We are in year nine of a ten year Countryside Stewardship agreement under which we receive % grants for works carried out to manage designated areas of land in an environmentally friendly fashion. This includes grazing areas at certain times of the year (this links in with the Batscape project as the insects that the bats feed on live within cow manure), fencing and scrub clearance - again with the bats in mind, leaving corridors for the bats to travel along.
Within our course policy document, we have a woodland management policy, which includes the clearing, thinning, pruning and replanting of appropriate species. We have created ‘wildlife stacks’ to encourage small mammals into these areas, and have successfully introduced bird boxes to our woodland areas.