Along with all the other county Wildlife Trusts, BBOWT owes its existence to Charles Rothschild who founded the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (SPNR) 110 years ago this month.

His concern to safeguard wildlife-rich places and foresight led to the whole idea of nature conservation, the establishment of National Nature Reserves and the network of over 2,300 nature reserves managed by trusts like ours.

At Dancersend, near Wendover in the Buckinghamshire Chilterns, we have a special link with this visionary man. It was here, in a valley where the large Rothschild estates of Tring Park and Halton met each other, that Walter, later Lord, Rothschild and his younger brother Charles explored at the ages of seven or eight, caught butterflies and other insects and began their life-long passion for wildlife, especially entomology.

When Miriam Rothschild, Charles’s equally passionate scientist and conservationist daughter, told me this (at a ceremony when we took over management of the Thames Water site in the valley) she recalled being taken to the area as a 5-year-old by her father and uncle to catch marsh fritillary butterflies!

When the Halton Estate was being broken up and sold off in 1922, Charles managed to secure the richest parts at Dancersend to form the original 78-acre private nature reserve. Later, in 1941, Miriam and her brother, Victor, passed this land to SPNR in memory of their father.

In 1968 BBONT (as it was then) was invited to manage areas not leased to the Forestry Commission, and eventually the freehold of the whole area was transferred to BBOWT.

Now we have even more to thank the Rothschilds for. Last year BBOWT was successful in gaining two years funding from the Rothschild Foundation for a whole range of enhancements at Dancersend reserve.

Whilst our volunteer team has gone from strength to strength over the last few years, with turnouts now regularly exceeding 25 people and both midweek and Sunday work sessions being run, the reserve has grown to 211 acres, meaning there is a lot more infrastructure to maintain and generally a lot more to do. The Rothschild funding will help us to tackle this, carry out some exciting new habitat creation and completely update the signage and interpretation.

New equipment is on order which will enable grass and scrub areas to be cut and collected by the Alpine tractor, reducing the seemingly endless raking tasks for the volunteers (I’ve been promising this for years!).

Old fencing has already been replaced by contractors to allow better grazing and new wood-meadow areas will soon be fenced and planted at the reserve Extension, with invertebrates and birds particularly in mind.

Research has been carried out for the creation of a wildlife pond, the first open water habitat for the reserve, and excavation will take place later this year.

Improvements to the Forge, the building at Dancersend Waterworks we use as a home for our volunteers, for tool storage and for training courses, have been agreed and are being negotiated with the owners, Thames Water.

There will be work through the autumn and winter months on refreshing the signage using recycled plastic posts which will not rot with the frequency we have experienced with wooden posts.

There will be access improvements for visitors, though it will not be possible to get rid of the steeper slopes! Work is underway on text and designs for an overhaul of the interpretation signs, a refreshed Tree Trail, a new audio trail and information for visitors to the reserve, including telling the rather neglected story of the Rothschild connection and the role of Dancersend in the development of the idea of nature conservation in the UK.

We will also be continuing discussions and planning with a number of neighbouring landowners to help them carry out management which will extend wildlife friendly habitat elsewhere in the Dancers End valley and Aston Hill area.

We have a strand of the funding secured for some specialist wildlife surveying at the reserve and this will be focused on fungi, with a series of special visits through the year by the Bucks Fungus Group, and chalk grassland invertebrates, with a specialist contracted to make a number of survey visits to the reserve Extension and our neighbour’s land.

Finally, a series of special events – guided walks, field explorations, workshops and family wildlife hunts – are being planned with our Community and Learning teams. Phew! It makes me exhausted just writing about this, but it is such a wonderful opportunity to do amazing things for wildlife in the area and for our visitors.

Watch out for further news on all these projects in future blogs and do join some of the events – the next one coming up soon, a guided walk with a focus on the history of the reserve, taking place on Sunday 19 June, with the option of a morning (10.00-12.30) or afternoon (13.30-1600) walk. Book via the boxes below.

Mick Jones
Volunteer Warden, Dancersend