The Wild Comes Back Gently - A Return to Halls Cleave

It’s hard to know exactly where to begin when talking about Wetland Habitat Restoration carried out at Halls Cleave right now. You could start with the frogs - just the sheer number of them - tucked into damp reedy margins, slipping between tufts of sphagnum. Or maybe with the dragonflies, gleaming and twitching in the warmth of the late summer air. Or the bats, which have started to return in greater numbers, stitching patterns into the evening light. In truth, the story here is in everything at once. Because Mardon Mire, the wetland area that has been restored, is coming back to life - and fast.

A few weeks ago, we shared a piece about the Woodland Trust’s work up here, focusing on the installation of leaky dams as a natural way to slow and store water in the landscape of the catchment. It felt hopeful - something gentle, purposeful, rebalancing. Now, returning to the same place after a prolonged period of dry weather, the reality is even more remarkable.

Despite the lack of rainfall and the upper river looking as skinny as I’ve ever seen it, those leaky dams are still holding back water. There are pools - actual standing water - dotted across the mire. That in itself is a quiet marvel. In a time when many landscapes are parched and rushing water off faster than ever, when and if it does rain, this one is holding onto it. And because of that, life, Jim, as we know it, is returning!

Water held in a standing pool where frogs, dragonflies and birds feed

A Woodland Floor Awakening

I met with Matt from the Woodland Trust, a quiet, knowledgeable and passionate bloke and enjoyed a walk and talk whilst wandering further into the site with the scent of wet soil around us. What struck me most was the woodland floor itself - springy, soft, rich with growth. There’s a real sense that the understorey, the foundation of the forest floor, is waking up. Ferns, mosses, liverworts, wood sorrel and all those strange little plants that thrive in the humidity are beginning to re-establish themselves. It’s subtle, but it’s happening as a result of opening up the conifer canopy and letting in the sunlight.

Technically, this piece in Halls Cleave isn’t classified as ancient woodland - at least not by official designations. That term in the UK is used for areas that have been continuously wooded since at least 1600, the date of the first reliable maps. Ancient woodland is precious because it often preserves ecological structures and species that have developed undisturbed over millennia. Some of these sites are believed to stretch back as far as the end of the last Ice Age. As a much wiser man once told me - The trees are like the icing on a cake… It’s what’s beneath the icing that makes ancient woodland so special - That’s the stuff you really get excited about!

But even without that label, something about this new wetland area feels deeply rooted. The speed and diversity of the forest floor’s recovery suggest that this has always been woodland - and an old one at that. Maybe the canopy has shifted, but the soil, the spores, the mycorrhizal networks underground - they remember. And now, they’re responding. It’s amazing to think that these restoration works were only carried out a couple of years ago. Already, in places, it looks and feels like you're walking into Jurassic Park!

Cue Dicky Attenborough with a walking stick - “Welcome, to Jurassic Park”

Frogs, Bats, and a Thousand Tiny Things

As we walked, the sheer abundance of life was striking. Frogs popped away from our boots in the wet mud. We saw butterflies flitting between water mint and open patches. Dragonflies hovered over still water, hunting. These are all signs of a functioning, healthy ecosystem, especially after disruption. Insects, in particular, are quick to return where the conditions are right. And they bring everything else with them.

Through monitoring, Matt is particularly encouraged by the number of bats returning. In a small way, this shows the chain reaction of habitat restoration: hold the water, and the plants return; when the plants return, the insects follow; and behind them come the amphibians, the birds, the bats, and so on.

It’s the kind of quietly cascading recovery that makes you pause and take a breath. And again, like our rivers, this all begins from water.

The Forest Floor beginning to awaken

What Next?

This small but mighty project begs a big question: where else can this approach, this recipe, be replicated? Where else in the Teign Catchment could we begin to hold some water in these tiny tributaries, and give these overlooked habitats a chance to thrive? During this continued dry spell, seeing the upper river slow and begin to expose its gravelly bones is quite scary. Surely we need to be looking seriously into how we can hold some of this precious resource high in the catchment to allow gravity to do its thing?

There are so many opportunities: tucked-away woodland edges, damp hollows, streambanks that flash flood in heavy rains and deposit straight into the main river. Surely, if we started looking at these places not as problems to be drained, but as possibilities to be restored, I genuinely believe we could spark a wider revival that could only, in turn, benefit our rivers.

Some more standing pools teaming with insects and retaining water high up in the Fingle Gorge

We know now that these natural flood management approaches work. Leaky dams made from local wood, brash bunds, small scrapes - all of them help recreate the wetness that woodland and mire habitats once relied on. And in doing so, they bring life back with them. They also help in other ways: storing carbon, preventing erosion, buffering drought, and slowing floods downstream. When it’s put like this, it’s win after win.

If the work at Halls Cleave is anything to go by, the recovery doesn’t take decades. It starts in months. The woodland remembers what it was, and given the right conditions, it begins to stitch itself back together.

Habitat Restoration Is About Relationship

One of the most powerful things about all this is that it’s happening with almost no fanfare. No fences, no big infrastructure - just passionate people working with the land, observing, nudging, and then stepping back and letting the landscape remember. The idea of habitat restoration can sometimes sound technical or distant, but what’s happening here is deeply local. Grounded. Accessible.

You don’t need to own a forest to be part of this. Walk the woods. Learn the plants. Pay attention to where water flows during the rain. As always, volunteer when you can. Support the people and organisations doing this work. Share the stories. The land responds. It always has and always will.

The Wild Is Waiting

Halls Cleave is a healthy reminder that the wild doesn’t need to be built from scratch. It’s already here and in abundance on Dartmoor, quietly waiting beneath our feet. And when water is stored, when the flow is slowed, and the soil is left to breathe, it comes back. Gently. Persistently. Wonderfully.

There’s something deeply moving about watching this process unfold. It makes me wonder what other places are waiting for their moment, too.