Our reserves have a wide range of infrastructure, from bridges, lime kilns, ruined farm buildings, sheds, and even a WWII bunker – not to mention dozens of mineshafts! Since the majority of these are accessible to the public, it’s important to carry out regular checks to ensure these are safe, and that any required maintenance work is carried out in a timely fashion.

At the same time, we use this opportunity to map out the grassland restoration and scrub clearance work we’ve carried out over the winter months, so that we have records and evidence of the funded works that we’ve done as part of our agri-environment agreements.

We also have many kilometres of livestock fencing on our reserves, and keeping this in good condition is essential to enable us to maintain conservation grazing regimes, which are the most important management tool we have for keeping our species rich grassland habitats in good condition.

While we occasionally receive project funding to replace large stretches of old, failed fencing, we carry out the majority of repair work ourselves. Periodic inspections of the fence lines allow us to plan necessary works, and to identify any areas in need of urgent repair before we bring livestock onto the reserves for the new grazing year. Access points such as gates and stiles also need a rolling program of repair and replacement, as even treated timber only lasts so long before it rots in the ground.

While the shallow soils and limestone bedrock on Mendip make for excellent calcareous grassland, they do present a challenge to getting fence posts in the ground! In some particularly challenging areas we will need help from contractors to use metal fencing stakes driven into rock with specialist machinery.