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Habitat and infrastructure works at Ffrwd

Ffrwd farm mire is a wetland reserve in south Carmarthenshire. It is a lovely mix of fen, wet ditches, reed bed, and alder/ willow carr woodland. It is home to an abundance of wetland species including water voles, grass snakes, various dragonflies and damselflies, birds such as cetti’s warbler and water rails, and also the rare marsh pea. This year various habitat and infrastructure works have been carried out across the site.

Through funding from NRW we have cleared reed mace from a ditch and re profiled another ditch, creating more open water. This is good news for water voles and shall also favour some of the early colonising water plants such as frog bit. There is a network of ditches at Ffrwd. We aim to open up one or two of them every couple of years, so that all the successional stages from open water to reed swamp are well represented. The newly profiled ditch has also been fenced off to allow the banks to becoming vegetated and offer more wildlife potential.

Other infrastructure works include replacing part of the perimeter fence and a new culvert, we have also installed a pasture pump for watering cattle. These works will support and aid the grazing that is an important management tool for the fen and other grassland parts of the site.