Portsmouth Water’s Havant Thicket Reservoir Project

The News, Portsmouth

Five newborn calves are set to play a very special role in Portsmouth Water’s Havant Thicket Reservoir project. Azalia, Alfie, Anna, Agatha and Alice were all born this autumn on South Holt Farm, a wildlife sanctuary northeast of the new reservoir site. The sanctuary is being rewilded by charitable trust, the Pig Shed Trust, in partnership with Portsmouth Water. This rewilding project, spanning 80 hectares over 80 years, is a key component of the local water company’s commitment to plant and improve more than 200 hectares of woodland and wood pasture as part of the Havant Thicket Reservoir scheme.

Transcript

00:00So I'm Harvey Jones and I manage the land here at South Holt and these cows have got

00:07a really important job to do for us. They manage the landscape for us, so we're using

00:12natural processes where we can to try and increase the amount of biodiversity that we've

00:17got on site. So the cows, they eat and they poo and they move the seeds around, they create

00:25open areas where insects can flourish, they move seeds so that plants can move through

00:30the landscape. And over the next 80 years, which is the duration of this project, they

00:35should help drive this landscape back to a much more natural state with a huge amount

00:40of wildlife flourishing. That's our intention and so they've got a very important job to

00:47do. They work very hard.

00:48Hi, my name's Ruth Prith, I'm an Assistant Environment Manager on the Havant Picket Reservoir

00:54Project.

00:55And I'm Sinead McCarthy and I'm the Ecology Manager on the Havant Picket Reservoir Project.

00:59Excited to be working on this project. The project has been environmentally led and it's

01:03got the environment at its heart. In fact, Portsmouth Water have gone above and beyond

01:08their commitments at the planning stage and even started planting trees prior to even

01:14getting the Outlining Planning Commission. Since then, some of the additional projects

01:18associated with the mitigation has involved translocating a number of trees from the

01:24original footprint of the site. I think there's over 450 trees and plants that have been translocated

01:30and we've engaged a lot with a whole team of budding volunteers in that process.

01:36And as well as translocating trees, we've also translocated some natural bat roost features

01:41that we've put up in and around the Havant Picket woodland. And this year we've actually

01:46recorded a bat using one of those features, which is quite unusual and quite exciting

01:51and which is one of my favourite parts of the project.

01:54Hi, I'm Mark Jessop and I'm the Environment Manager for Portsmouth Water working on the

01:59Havant Picket Reservoir Project. This project is part of a wider commitment to planting

02:06and improving over 200 hectares of woodland and woodland pasture throughout the area.

02:12Other projects include Southleaf Forest and also Havant Picket Woodland.

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