FISH and other waterborne wildlife now have a better habitat at a village brook following the successful removal of huge clumps of Japanese Knotweed.

The invasive plant has been cleared from most of Blackpool Brook in Blakeney as part of the Foresters’ Forest Landscape Partnership Programme using Heritage Lottery funding.

Treatment carried out by the Wye and Usk Foundation in 2016 and 2017 has now eradicated the weed from the weir, and it is hoped that a further treatment in 2018 will see the last of the clumps wiped out elsewhere on the brook.

The weed has been recorded by Foresters’ Forest volunteers on all three main waterways flowing from the Forest into the Severn – Cannop Brook, which becomes the River Lyd near Whitecroft, Blackpool Brook and Cinderford and Soudley Brooks.

If further funding can be obtained, concentrations of Japanese knotweed on the Cinderford and Soudley Brooks will be tackled next, alongside other non-native invasive plants such as Himalayan Balsam on all three brooks, and Stunk cabbage which has recently appeared on Cannop Brook.

Blackpool Brook has also been identified as a suitable location to construct a fish pass to allow salmon, trout, lamprey and eel to migrate upstream as part of a wider Waterways, Ponds and Mines project being delivered under the programme.