Dames Slough drain

 

The remodelling of Dames Slough drain some years ago has had the desired effect, the environs of the reinstated forest rivulet are significantly wetter for longer. As a consequence a broad band of adjacent trees have found it impossible to tolerate their new habitat, succumbing to the damp conditions. This is a reoccurring phenomena wherever waterways are restored to their former pre Victorian courses. Reminding us that the forest was once a much wetter landscape all round.

Dames Slough

Dames Slough

Southern discomfort

 

When the forest's like this it always puts me in minds of the film 'Southern Comfort', a thriller set in the swampy woodlands of Louisiana; of course difference being Hampshire's New Forest is colder, and doesn't have any alligators or angry Cajuns with guns. Unless you stay on the main paths and forestry tracks moving cross country when the forest is like this would be more aptly described as Southern discomfort.

Dames Slough drain

It's not only the forest streams that have been restored to something like their pre-Victorian courses, the project has also included some of the larger drains, themselves originally small brooks and tributaries. Through Dames Slough enclosure, below Dames Slough Hill, what was another near straight drain now meanders gently between the stands as it would've 200 years ago...or maybe it was open wet heath back then? As a consequence, and like other restored forest watercourses, the trees in the direct environs are having to adjust to a much wetter environment; as with the other sites, some oak and beech handle it better than others, although eventually most, if not all, will drown, to be replaced by carr woodland species.