Gibside: Snipes Dene

July 2018

Snipes Dene is thriving. It must be some eight or nine years ago since much of the valley was laid waste by the removal of the Forestry Commission’s timber crop. A large part of that crop was western hemlock – a fast growing North American import. That’s good for business perhaps but, for Gibside Rangers and us volunteers, it’s just another non-native, invasive species to control. And that’s a battle. Over the intervening years, we must have pulled up tens of thousands of western hemlock saplings. There will be more battles ahead, but it’s safe to say the war is won.

Snipes Dene regeneration

In the summer of 2011 we selected a section of the Dene to survey and, over the next few years attempted to monitor its regeneration. At the start, this was a leisurely enough pursuit. The ground was largely free of cover, and provided with some substantial tree stumps on which to drink coffee, eat sandwiches, and study nature. Our survey area was roughly demarcated by a few oak, beech, birch and sycamore which had been left standing. Along with existing holly and alder, all had soon produced saplings. Broom, gorse and rowan were early colonisers too, together with patches of stinging nettles, red campion, ling, bilberry and lots of foxgloves. For the best part though, the ground remained bare, its decaying wood seemingly only populated by hordes of spiders. Quite what they were eating was a mystery; there wasn’t even an ant or woodlouse to be seen.

New Rowan trees

Two years later, we recorded many more touches of colour, and grasses, rushes, bramble and raspberry were well established. In the summer of 2015 we gave up; the site had become impenetrable. Elsewhere in the Dene the rate of regeneration had been patchy, and had been boosted by the planting of a good mix of native broadleaf. Although we still have to get in there and cut out the persistent western hemlock and rhododendron, today Snipes Dene is a fine wooded valley. And so it should be: along with much of Gibside, it is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest.