Habitat piles and eco piling
A log pile in a shaded corner, built from the larger sections of a felled tree, becomes home to beetles, fungi, hedgehogs, toads and slow worms within a season. Brash stacked the same way gives wrens and robins somewhere to nest and small mammals somewhere to hide from the buzzards. Neither needs anything but somewhere out of the way and a decision to leave it alone. On a large clearance, eco piling the organic material on site rather than carting it off saves lorry loads and money.
Standing dead wood and habitat pruning
A dead tree that is not near anything is one of the most valuable things in a garden or a wood. Rather than felling it to the ground we can reduce it to a safe standing stem, a monolith, with the cuts made to look like natural fractures rather than saw cuts. Woodpeckers, bats, owls and a great many insects use exactly this kind of tree, and the Cornish countryside has far fewer of them than it should. The same approach works on a large living tree that needs to be made safe but not removed.
Bird and bat boxes
Where a tree with holes and cavities has to come down, boxes on the trees that remain go some way to replacing what was lost. We fit bird boxes of the right size and aspect for the species you are likely to have, and bat boxes where a tree removal has taken a potential roost. If bats are actually present in a tree that needs work, that is a licensing matter and we stop and involve an ecologist.
Part of every job, not a separate one
None of this needs to be a special project. On most removals and woodland jobs we ask whether you would like a habitat pile rather than every last log taken away, and on most the answer costs less than the alternative. Where a client wants the site completely clear we do that instead.