Written by Jade Walton, Transforming Lives Trainee
For the management of our Peterborough sites, we rely on the help of volunteers to get as much work done as possible for the benefit of our local reptiles and amphibians.
During the spring and summer months this mainly consists of helping with our surveying efforts, but during the colder months, our work is just as, if not even more important.
Once the weather is cold enough for our reptile and amphibian species to brumate (similar to hibernating), we must get to work with habitat management. This includes pond restoration, creation, and management, as well as scrub clearance, hibernaculum and log pile creation, and setting up and maintaining survey routes for the next survey season.
Given the size of our reserves and the limited time window to conduct the habitat management, this is not an easy task! Hence our call for volunteers at each of our Peterborough reserves. Volunteering dates run throughout the year, mostly on week days, but with occasional Saturday dates.
Volunteering with us is a great way to stay active during the winter, and provides an opportunity to learn new skills such as pond management and tree coppicing. It also gives you the chance to connect with other nature lovers, and to socialise with like-minded people.
At Froglife, we are extremely grateful to all of our volunteers, past, present, and future.
If you would like to join us at one of our volunteer days, or would just like some more information, please email our reserve warden clare.middleton@froglife.org
The next step, once the pond is dug, is to use the appropriate liner. This could be made of rubber, clay, PVC, or you could use a preformed pond made of plastic or fibreglass. To fill your lined pond you could either wait for it to fill naturally with rain over the winter months, or use appropriately treated tap water.
You start by digging a hole, it doesn’t have to be too wide or deep, just enough to retain heat to keep reptiles and amphibians warm. Once you have done this, you can start filling the hole with logs, rocks and bricks. Once you have filled some of the hole, you can start piling the larger logs and sticks a little higher than ground level to then cover with softer things such as leaf litter and bramble (these help to trap the warmth). Finally, you can use the mud you dug up to then cover up the hibernaculum, remembering to leave some gaps so that the animals can get in and out. 