Culdrose trainees help Cornish conservation

If you go down to woods today, you’re in for a big surprise.....21 Sailors with loppers, saws and clippers have been waging war on a rhododendron infestation!

On Saturday 18th May, trainee Aircrew and Naval Airmen from Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose joined forces with the Sustainable Trust, a local woodland and historical monument conservation charity, to set about clearing an area of woodland. 

The Trust own two areas of woodland, Crevner and Fox Groves on the Praze-an-Beeble Estate near Camborne in Cornwall. Both sites were over-run with Rhododendron and Cherry Laurel bushes which have been shown to be poisonous to some grazing animals; diminishing numbers of earthworms, birds and other plants in the infested woodland. They can also reduce the regenerative capacity of a site leading eventually to the bio-diversity of a site to breakdown and become damaged irretrievably. The task for the team from RNAS Culdrose was to cut, pile and burn as much of this unwanted vegetation as possible.