Action to improve Sutton Park environment

Tree surgeons have been busy clearing a large tract of land opposite the car park at Bracebridge in Sutton Park as part of a heathland restoration project.

The work is part of a heathland restoration project designed to improve the habitat for wildlife and preserve different types of vegetation in the park.

While many park visitors assumed the car park was being extended, it was in fact a project to clear dead and overpopulated trees to be replaced with lowland heathland an ecologically rich habitat that forms on nutrient poor sandy soils.

Sutton Park is a nationally important lowland heathland site and while much uch of the restoration work carried out looks dramatic and sometimes drastic, it had to be carried out.

Park rangers say it is important to continue to graze and work the site to ensure the survival of a patchwork of different vegetation types at different stages of development and to provide to a host of species in miniature the habitats that once existed across the entire midlands region.

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The work, by Birmingham City Council, includes a reduction of mature birch to maintain and enhance lowland heathland areas.

One of the Birmingham City Council tree surgeons said that heathland is also better for absorbing harmful CO2, as well being an extra grazing area for the wild Exmoor ponies and other wildlife in the park.

The timber will be transported and used in an ecologically friendly way to power plants in the region.

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