ON many occasions I have written about the splendour of our district's lowland heaths.

If you take a trip out to any of them now it is easy to see why as the heather is in bloom and the bleak heathland landscape is a wonderful purple colour.

It is such a shame that this once really common habitat that was once such a feature of our country landscape has now become one of the most threatened wildlife habitats in the country.

However, lowland heath is not the only rare and rapidly disappearing habitat, there are also some areas of magnificent wetlands that are also in danger of vanishing.

In the Wyre Forest district we have some beautiful wetlands, which include lovely areas of fen at Puxton and also pretty orchid-fringed wet meadows.

Much has been done in recent years to try and conserve these remaining fragments of habitat and things are looking a little brighter for what remains.

There is one wetland habitat though that is even more threatened than these are and unfortunately its conservation is proving to be quite an uphill battle.

Wet woodland used to be a real common feature of our district extending to huge areas along the Severn, Stour and Hoo watercourses.

These days, there are only isolated fragments left. Many are in private ownership, but the largest is found at Hurcott Pool.

Wet woodland, unlike its drier contemporaries over the course of history, has been found to have very little commercial value.

It was too soggy to regularly keep animals on and it was hardly the place noble lords would want to go to chase game, as it is hard to show off when you are sinking in mud and having to cope with quite a variety of intriguing biting flies.

As for timber, the principal tree species are alder and willow, which are quite unsuitable for home, boat and furniture building. Even so, man found some use for these areas, evidence of which can still just be seen at Hurcott.

Alder, while not the best general-purpose timber, did have one redeeming feature in that it is highly resistant to rot. Hence, it was harvested through a coppice regime in many of these woods.

Old coppice stools and the remains of an ancient track way leading into the woods, which was used for extracting the coppice products can still can still be seen at Hurcott.

However, the little economic viability of these practices even in past times led to most areas of wet wood been drained or felled and grazed.