A wet, muddy, but pleasantly sunny and hot day was spent by seven Manchester volunteers, plus three from the Merseyside group. We were in the lowest of the ponds in the park to prepare it for an experimental attempt to control an invasive pond weed - Crassula helmsii. This semi-aquatic plant can (and does) grow to cover ponds and starve other waterlife of oxygen. You can find more information about it here:
http://cabiinvasives.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/getting-swamped-australian-swamp-stonecrop-crassula-helmsii-in-the-uk/
In the pond at Dunham, the rangers wanted to try covering the the crassula with plastic sheeting in the same way you might kill off weeds in your garden. In order to do this as effectively as possible, we were there to remove the iris growing through the crassula so the polythene sheets could be flat on the surface to cut out the light. The iris will happily grow back again - we are usually removing excess from the ponds at Dunham once a year anyway.
Supervised by ranger John Mann, most of the group were in the pond in waders, pulling up the iris, with a couple on the bank dragging and piling it up. It was going to stay there to drain for a day or so.
This will allow the various wee beasties in the iris to escape back to the pond before it is taken away for burning. At the end of the day we laid the polythene, dug it into the bank and weighted it with logs from the pond. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the experiment.
Three moorhen chicks and their mother went happily about their business in the pond while we worked and there were plenty of fish, dragonflies and damselflies. The park was full of visitors, as you might imagine on a sunny Sunday in June, quite a few small children were envious of us paddling about.
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