Supporting Manx Wildlife Trust's first Agro-forestry project at Mullen e Cloie

We’ve started working closely with the Manx Wildlife Trust on a number of great initiatives, the first of which we rolled up our sleeves on last week.

Mullen e Cloie in St John’s is the Trust’s first Agro-forestry project aimed at researching and highlighting the benefits of combining tree planting and grazing in one scheme. 

The first phase of the project has been to plant native species like Hazel, Crab Apple, Oak, Dog Rose and Birch in the main grazing field and in fenced-off areas. This will not only benefit the environment and local wildlife but the grazing animals themselves. Pollarding the hazels will provide additional feed for grazing animals, introducing healthy natural gut bacteria whilst putting nutrients back into the soil. 

Manx Telecom teams joined Manx Wildlife Trust experts to plant over 1,000 trees and construct protected areas for new plants. The project will be managed by the Trust and will provide valuable information to support landowners looking to make similar choices with their land.

After spending the day digging and planting at Mullen e Cloie, Manx Telecom CEO Gary Lamb commented, “We have long-standing associations with the Parish Walk and Royal Manx Agricultural Show and I’m delighted to start a new, environmentally focussed initiative alongside these treasured community events. The Mullen e Cloie project has been a great way to start our relationship with Manx Wildlife Trust and it was especially pleasing to see staff out in the field and getting involved.” 

He went on to add, “As a team, we are looking forward to growing this relationship and committing more of our time, as well as much-needed funds, to help the Trust in establishing and managing critical spaces in our natural and built environments.”

We are absolutely delighted to be supporting Manx Wildlife Trust at Mullen e Cloie and look forward to announcing future exciting projects together shortly!