Watford Lodge improvements

Following a serious decline in the fish population which was believed to be due to predation by the goosander duck, several major actions have been taken on Watford Lodge. The first of these actions has been to introduce artificial islands to afford some shelter from the birds, the second the implant of water weed at the water's edge, using banks of implanted coir(coconut fibre).The detail and pictures of these activities are shown below

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This is a diagram of one of the islands.It is essentially a box shaped construction of galvanised wire netting.Passing through the horizontal aspect of the box is a further piece of flat netting which supports a bed of coir implanted with water weed. The depth of the box is equivalent to the height of the box above the water. The buoyancy is provided by four rigid polyolefine tubes bolted together and attached to the netting with plastic straps.The system is anchored to the bottom of the lodge using concrete blocks. It is anticipated that the roots of the weed will eventually form a permanent bond with the bottom of the lodge and provide further shelter from the goosander.Initially protection will be provided from the goosander by swimming through the netting and under the island.There are four of these islands in position on the lodge,providing altogether 16 square metres of protection!

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The picture on the right shows one of the islands a few days after it was installed in April 2008. You can clearly see the mesh of the netting. The only bird which has been able to access the cage has been a grey wagtail.At this stage there is little growth of weed and we don' know yet if the mallards have been able to "get at" the weed.

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This picture was taken during the third week in May 2008 and you can see that there has been extensive growth of water plants. Obviously long term this is going to afford protecion not only for fish but also some level of protection for birds and other fauna. we know that these islands have been successful in other parts of the country where waters have been seriously depleted of fish by migratory birds.Watch this space for progress.

Finally this is one of the eight bank implants and it is looking good. The plants are getting established and over a period of time the coir will decay leaving hopefully, a well established clump of plants and weeds along the waterside.This process will continue to be monitored.One of the main functions of such plants is to promote spawning.

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