Rey's Masters Blog - 2 | Manx Wildlife Trust

Find out all about Rey's last semester and the start of semester 2!

Rey Studies — Sadly for the last half of my module this was the best way to study, with the fire on. Yogi and Charles thought they were good helpers!

It has been longer than I‘d hoped between this blog and the last, a consequence of getting the eternal (well thats what it felt like!) flu for the final 2 months of last year. This made studying extra hard with a wooly head, however, I was still able to enjoy the module and the two assignments I had.

The first assignment was looking into how to write grant bids. This gave me a great opportunity to delve into the story of MWT’s Ramsey Forest Project, where I learnt all about the process of planting a woodland, alongside regenerating and protecting ancient woodland and enhancing conifer plantations to give a better ecological value. This included learning about companion planting techniques, and the uses of trees as super nursery, nursery, nitrogen fixers and then the slow growing, long lived trees that are the primary species for the woodland, in this case oak.

For my second project we had to create a 5 minute spoken presentation about a topic of our choice as an education tool. For this we chose one of the Island’s most loved species, the grey and harbour seal. We had great plans for this as a recorded video, showcasing some of the Island’s spectacular scenery and hopefully some seal input too, however my voice had other plans and I ended up croaking my way through a spoken presentation instead. Never the less I really enjoyed learning about the 2 types of seals that call the Isle of Man home, their differences and then into more detail about the grey seal breeding season and patterns. Watch this space, as this video will be filmed shortly, with input now from other MWT staff as it is no longer for my assignment.

Rey barnacles — Just one of the many quadrats of barnacles to be counted...

Looking forward, now nice and healthy (thank goodness), into the new year my next semester is starting next week and is titled ‘Management of Aquatic Protected Areas’. I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into this module having not done much work or studying around the aquatic side of conservation in the past. Having sheep and horses seems to keep my interest quite terrestrial, even surrounded by the sea! This could also be in part due to a barnacle counting dissertation for my BSc, which is still, to this day, giving me counting flash backs!

In this next module the use of software is being introduced, specifically QGIS, which the MWT Conservation Officers use within their jobs, so this will be a great skill for me to learn. Not much more about the module has been revealed yet so I look forward to finding out more next week!

Rey