Last Thursday evening (7 July 2011), Dorset Wildlife Trust hosted a barbecue and social evening to say thank you to all the volunteers that helped out with the aftermath of the devastating fire last month. This was followed by a walk through remaining areas of Upton Heath to hear nightjars.

An overwhelming response was received in the rescue campaign after the fire, with over a hundred volunteers on some days, hundreds of reptiles, and finishing with a big litter pick.

Steve Davis from Dorset Wildlife Trust said: "Over the course of the 8 days of rescue work, we had a total of 261 individuals volunteering, many of them doing multiple days.  Couple this with the staff and others who helped to lead the groups of volunteers, and it was in excess of 300. Volunteer online registrations jumped from a usual  5-6 per week to 302 in three days!"

A total of 551 reptiles were rescued: 34 sand lizards, 432 common lizards, 28 slow-worms, 4 grass snakes, 26 smooth snakes, and 27 adders. Nine amphibians were also caught and moved: 7 palmate newts, 2 common toads.

Following on from the rescues, Steve Davis and Andy Fale from DWT organised a litter pick, "...while we have the enthusiasm of the volunteers, and before it all greens up and covers the litter again."

Today's DARN task to create bare-ground patches for sand lizard egg-laying was a great success. A merry band of seven volunteers spent the morning digging sand patches on Turbary Common heathland nature reserve managed by Bournemouth Borough Council. Patches of bare sand are essential for female sand lizards to lay their eggs in at this time of year. They dig short tunnels in firm sand in sunny locations. Much of Turbary Common has become too dominated by western gorse that leaves little bare ground. In turn, sand lizard numbers have declined as a result of poor breeding success.

We dug a total of 30 patches today, generally around 1m in size. From 9am til 12pm, we worked our way across all the heathland compartments that are known to support sand lizards. After clearing vegetation and turf with mattocks and loppers, we dug or scraped down to firm sand with garden spades. Sand lizards have suffered dramatic declines in recent years in nearly all areas where they are present, so hopefully today's task will start reversing the decline almost immediately. This year's warm spring has meant that the end-of-May egg-laying season has started early. We found two 'test burrows' (shallow preliminary diggings by egg-laden female sand lizards) on an existing patch of bare sand beside an abandoned fox earth. We hope that the new sand patches might be used by sand lizards over the next couple of weeks, and we will monitor this.

Today's energetic volunteers were: James Boyland (Bournemouth Borough Council), Jonathan Crewe, Stephanie Clark & Chris Gleed-Owen (DARN volunteers), Darren Millward & Tina Ballard (Stour Valley Volunteers), and Brian Whitehorn (local reptile photographer). See the photos posted on this site's Photo Gallery.