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Restoration of Ecosystem for the Lake District

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Throughout the Lake District was no shortage of sheep, Herdwick Sheep is the native breed and is a cultural icon with Beatrix Potter who spent her lifestyle helping to preserve them. However, my understanding was there was a time when sheep farming was a profitable industry, that was before my time. Nowadays, a sheep farmer who makes a profit is a miracle, according to Sarah and it hasn't helped that the Herdwick Sheep suffered a massive loss of 25%  from Foot and Mouth disease in 2001(Helder-Herdwyck Farm, 2021). I recently learned that animal feed has been getting more expensive, making animal agriculture expensive (GOV.UK, 2022). There's a strong probability that many sheep may be killed just to cope with maintenance costs. A lot of fields will consequently be empty. This could be an opportunity to replant trees, restore ancient woodlands and produce new bog lands, which helps with ecosystems by giving birds, bugs, and deer a place to live in, help restore trophic levels and...
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Lake District Field trip- Pursuit for energy sources and decarbonisation.

 I arrived at the Lake District, and so far, it's been an interesting experience. Sarah has asked me to cover two subjects, and the first I want to talk about is the Net Zero Carbon achievement that the Lake District has placed by 2030. Time's not really on its side, but we have to try nonetheless. To that end, I propose some methods to help reduce the Carbon footprint. The first thing we need to address is transportation. A lot of places require vehicles to move from A to B. To reduce the CO2 footprint, we should establish a railway station for long-distance travel to bring people in and out of the Lake District, the railway accounts for less then 2% of the annual emissions in the UK as well as Globally (Ritchie, 2020), plus there's still potential to reduce their emissions further. The question is, where to place it? Will we be able to convince enough people to use it, and will it become economical? I recently learned that Sweden has developed Mills that can generate Iron...
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Walk in the Ashford's Woodland

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Yesterday Mum and I went with the dogs to the woodlands where my fitness group and I would exercise on a routine and regular basis. Exercises involved include lots of running, pushups, situps, burpees etc. But I digress. The park is filled with Oak trees and there were plenty of stinging nettles and bluebells around the woodlands, which covered a lot of ground. As we moved into the first part where the exercises begin, namely where other visitors would practice using bicycles, we spotted a Robin, but I wasn't successful in getting a good picture.  Afterwards, we saw a dead tree that must've been struck by lightning as it was burned inside like really burned. Inside was a massive colony of ants and I only took a picture so it may be a little hard to see them. But they were really active inside the tree. Of all the things I didn't expect to see was two ladybirds mating on a leaf as we moved up the hill. Mum told me that ladybirds are very important to an ecosystem as their la...
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Return to Alderbed Meadow

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Today I walked with my dad to Alderbed Meadow. On the 14th of December, I originally went there when it was recently reopened after suffering ash dieback and was closed to the public for some time.  On the "lucky" day of Friday, the 13th of May, I decided to return to check how its developed since then. So the first thing to notice was that the reserve was completely covered in Wild Garlic. It's not as strong as your store-bought garlic but you could still smell it if you're unfamiliar with it. After turning right my dad pointed to a makeshift Beatle hotel for insects to live in. We couldn't get close to it due to the garlic all over it. We then walked up the pathway to a bridge that had a stream flowing along with it. It's not deep and the flow is slow, and it's been like that for a long time. The Water Table must be exhausted. On the left was a large naked tree, and by naked I mean that the tree had no branches or leaves, nothing. Just a birdhouse that m...
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Singleton Lake

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 On May 1st, my Mum, nephew and I went to Singleton Lake. I didn't find a sign about the lake so here is a picture of the lake in question. The first picture below is Prunus laurocerasus or Evergreen Cherry Laurel, which is evergreen and has large black berries.  There were quite a few stinging nettles but among them were also these lovely purple flowers and these unusual plants as well. At the lake were quite a few ducks, among them were two-parent ducks and some ducklings; however, I couldn't get a proper picture, due to how far they were. My phone camera could only zoom out so far. There was also a dead seagull there. Not sure what killed it, but it was floating at the edge of the lake. There was also a nest in the trees. Again, not really able to get a clear picture. The edges of the lake was Iris growing there. As we walked around the lake, in the middle of the lake were two coots, medium sized water birds. I would love to be able to identify which species they were, unf...
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Overdue blog post for my own trips.

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I am overdue for doing this blog, partly due to the exam I needed to do, and after that, I wanted to unwind after all that tense revision. There was another field trip planned, but my tutor was ill, and I was promised there would be another, but I haven't had anything yet. Next week I'm going to the Lake District as part of our final trip. I probably will need the laptop with me, and I will stay there over the week. Before I go, I have been to a couple of areas to record wildlife and I want to do one more before I arrive. On the 28th of April, I went to another place I haven't been to before. The first thing was there were rabbit droppings around the area and we walked past horses in fields with electric fencing. That was when we walked into the woodlands which were covered with bluebells, lots and lots of bluebells.   The woods had Beech Trees, Birch trees and the occasional large Oaktree. What was interesting was a Beech tree that looked like it had three trunks growing i...
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