Visit to Long Mead Meadows, Swinford
Friday 10th June 6:00 pm (Numbers are strictly limited!)
As part of our celebration of what makes West Oxfordshire so special we have organised a visit to the wonderful hay meadows and wildlife site of Long Mead in Swinford on Friday 10th June.
The significance of Long Mead is that it is a hay meadow naturally fertilised by the flooding of the Thames. For more details of Long Mead visit http://www.longmeadwildlifesite.org.uk/
Such land used to be very valuable before the introduction of artificial fertilisers in the 1950s since it could uniquely offer two hay crops annually.
The Open University is exploring the potential of such meadows for carbon capture (which is thought to be excellent).
Unfortunately there now seems to be less meadows like Longmead left in the whole country than the area of Heathrow.
If you want the opportunity to learn more about this rare natural habitat please join us on Friday 10th June. We will sharing the visit with a local nature group and so can only accommodate 12 people on this visit. We are therefore not allowing plus 1's - each individual who wishes to join the visit will need to register separately.
If you are unable to get to see this hay meadow due to demand we are sorry but do not worry we will be having other visits on offer including one to Southill Solar farms and wildflower meadows
P.S. Meadows are constantly under threat around the country and Hinksey Meadows in Oxford is under threat. Oxford desperately needs an effective flood scheme but a destructive and ineffective 3 mile flood channel through the rare Hinksey Meadows would wreck the local environment and could cause biodiversity collapse in Oxford’s wildlife corridor. This channel is the most destructive and expensive part of the plan but the least effective. 85% of the scheme’s flood-risk reduction comes from maintaining existing defenses and new floodwalls and other earthworks.
If you care about water meadows then please take a look at this petition and consider signing it.
https://www.change.org/p/save-hinksey-meadows-from-the-destructive-channel-in-the-oxford-flood-alleviation-scheme
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