Oakley Woodlands Group
About our group
Oakley Woodlands group (OWG) was formed in 1997 with the support of Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council and the Hampshire Wildlife Trust to manage Cowdown Copse and St. Johns Copse. OWG members are all unpaid volunteers from the community.
The group’s aims are to:
• restore and maintain the woodland and its wildlife
• encourage a sensitive co-ordinated approach to the management of the woodland environment
• encourage and promote community involvement
• encourage educational usage of woodlands by local people, schools and youth organisations
Activities
The group has a varied and interesting work timetable. Its summer programme comprises of surveys of flora and fauna, guided walks and moth evenings. Winter events include footpath clearance, hazel coppicing and replanting and sorting and selling of woodland produce such as stakes.
The sites
Both Cowdown and St. Johns Copses are genuine examples of managed woodlands, and several species of wild flowers can be found in both woods which are indicators of ancient English Woodland. The predominant tree species are oak, and birch. Hazel dominates the shrub species.
Unusual sales
The group was formed primarily to restore the coppice cycle for conservation purposes and to provide amenity value to the public. However, we have endeavoured to make and sell simple products from the materials arising from cutting coppice, all the profits from these activities help to pay for the group’s running costs. We have mainly made garden products such as beanpoles, peasticks and stakes, and we started making charcoal using a hired kiln and this has proved very popular with some bags finding their way as far as Cumberland and France. One of our members, trained in chainsaw use, has made and sold oak strips for garden constructions using the timber from oaks which have fallen naturally or been trimmed for safety reasons. Another of our members has made turned mushrooms for garden decoration, many of which have been sold at the Village Show.
Occasionally we get unusual special requests, one was for 'facines' which are bundles of brushwood used as stakes in rivers and ponds alongside the banks to reduce erosion. We have supplied these to several local conservation bodies. Recently we sold some hazel poles to a member of the Hampshire Coppice Craftsmen’s Group for making mini hurdles – look out for them at some of the local agricultural shows. Perhaps our most interesting sale was 130 clean hazel poles 1” to 1.5” diameter and 8’ to 10’ long, these were purchased by a cooper who came all the way from Liverpool to collect them. They are destined to be made into mediaeval barrels which are constructed with hazel, rather than metal, hoops – we understand the barrels will eventually be displayed at Dover castle.
Future work parties
Work parties are usually held during the winter months, however this summer we are going to be carrying out wildlife surveys so please contact us for further information on how you may help.
All tasks are related to woodland management. For further details please see the Work Party Leaflet or contact Brian Slater on 01256 780810.
Small Mammals Survey
Dave Jewsbury recently trained a small group of enthusiastic amateurs. He started with an indoor session showing us how to operate the Longworth traps and how to take precautions to protect the animals (including the human ones!). We also arranged a schedule for attending to the traps which had to be inspected morning and evening.
On Sunday evening, 21 February, Dave took two trainee “handlers” and a volunteer reporter/photographer into 
Cowdown copse to bait and set the traps. Twenty five traps along the North East edge of the copse close to the field boundary were set. The following day, with great anticipation we assembled in the morning to examine the traps. Nothing! However, Dave said this was quite normal and he was quite confident that we would catch something. His optimism proved to be well-founded and as the days progressed we trapped a total of twenty four small mammals with a peak of seven on the morning of 25 February. We continued trapping until 27 February, a total of six days, eleven trap inspections and in this time we trapped 18 wood mice, 2 yellow necked mice, 1 field vole, 2 bank voles and 1 common shrew.
All the trainee “handlers” had several opportunities to handle and sex the animals and we are full of enthusiasm to repeat the exercise in autumn in St. John’s copse. Hopefully, we will progress to doing some actual counts, rather than just identifying species.