{"id":3029,"date":"2022-05-20T15:16:52","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T14:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/?page_id=3029"},"modified":"2022-05-31T19:46:56","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T18:46:56","slug":"what-can-we-learn-from-the-trap-grounds","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/june-2022\/what-can-we-learn-from-the-trap-grounds\/","title":{"rendered":"What can we learn from the Trap Grounds?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Glen Williams<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Book Review: The Trap Grounds Nature Reserve<\/em>, by Alan Allport<\/p>\n

\n

The Trap Grounds is a 10-acre nature reserve in North Oxford, sandwiched between the Oxford Canal and the railway line. Twenty-five years ago this small pocket of land was the site of an abandoned rubbish dump, overgrown with virtually impenetrable thickets of hawthorn and brambles.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Alan in the \u2018Dingle\u2019. Photo by Alan Allport<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today, the Trap Grounds is home to a rich and ever-growing variety of wildlife including swans, blackbirds, buzzards, robins, wrens, mallards, moorhens, herons, sparrowhawks, water voles and woodpeckers, as well as foxes and many different species of invertebrates. Six ponds have been created and a network of paths plus a boardwalk have replaced the muddy tracks. The meadows have been cleared of fallen trees and scrub, and thousands of brambles have been uprooted and replaced by swathes of wildflowers and daffodils.<\/p>\n

Alan Allport has just published a 113-page book, The Trap Grounds Nature Reserve, beautifully illustrated by 29 of Alan\u2019s own line drawings. The book starts with \u201cA Brief History\u201d of the Trap Grounds by Catherine Robinson, who in 1996 began mobilising volunteers to clear paths and glades in the woodlands and to dig up invading willows from the reed bed. She also led a five-year campaign to protect the Trap Grounds from a proposed housing development. Her efforts were ultimately successful, and the whole site is now managed by the Friends of the Trap Grounds, in partnership with Oxford City Council. <\/p>\n

Alan\u2019s book takes the form of a year-long diary in which he records, month by month, the seasonal changes in the living world in the Trap Grounds: encounters with its wildlife, the plants and animals living there, and the work done throughout the year by the Friends of the Trap Grounds \u2013 and many other volunteers \u2013 to conserve and enhance this precious natural resource. But the Trap Grounds\u2019 long history as a rubbish dump still keeps cropping up. Alan writes: <\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWherever we dig \u2013 even to plant primroses \u2013 up come broken bricks and other debris, dumped on the Trap Grounds through most of the twentieth century. The twisted metal, broken glass and suchlike we generally carry off site, to be loaded eventually into a skip and taken to landfill. The dumped bricks are a different matter. We have hundreds, maybe thousands of tons of them….\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
One of 100 rubbish skips. Photo by Alan Allport<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But for every problem they devise a solution:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe decide it is time to cover some of the biggest of
\nthese brick-piles with topsoil. We can then plant on top, and if we are successful, these ugly reminders of the Trap Grounds\u2019 past \u2013 as an unregulated fly-tip \u2013 will be transformed into flowering green hillocks.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Note: it worked!)<\/p>\n

As I read Alan\u2019s beautifully written account of how a small group of volunteers has transformed a rubbish dump into a hugely appreciated community resource, I could not help thinking about the possible wider relevance of this experience. The Trap Grounds, it seems to me, is a kind of microcosm of the way we human beings have trashed, polluted, and degraded the natural world, bringing many plant and animal species to the brink of extinction and threatening to make large parts of the world uninhabitable. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Alan\u2019s book demonstrates how a small group of well informed, determined and resourceful people can reverse the degradation of a small part of their natural environment. His book should be widely read, not only as an inspirational story, but also for its wider relevance. Is it too much to hope that the story of the Trap Grounds can inspire other initiatives \u2013 not only small but also on a much wider scale \u2013 to reverse our planet\u2019s headlong rush towards the extinction of life as we know it?<\/p>\n

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Back to June 2022 Newsletter Main Page<\/a><\/p>\n

Forty-Three<\/em> Newsletter \u2022 Number 518 \u2022 June 2022
\n<\/strong>Oxford Friends Meeting
\n43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW<\/p>\n

newsletter@oxfordquakers.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright 2022, Oxford Quakers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glen Williams Book Review: The Trap Grounds Nature Reserve, by Alan Allport The Trap Grounds is a 10-acre nature reserve in North Oxford, sandwiched between the Oxford Canal and the railway line. Twenty-five years ago this small pocket of land was the site of an abandoned rubbish dump, overgrown with virtually impenetrable thickets of hawthorn … Continue reading What can we learn from the Trap Grounds?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"parent":3001,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3029","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3029"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3143,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3029\/revisions\/3143"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}