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My name is Paul McGurk, and I am currently studying the Foundation degree in Rural and Countryside Management at Greenmount. It’s a two year full-time course which includes a 15-week industry placement. The course has a really good mix of theory and practice. Among the many benefits the course has to offer is the chance to get outdoors and gain practical experience which I can use in my future career. Recently, the class went on a veteran tree survey of Antrim. This is part of a Woodland Trust project which aims to record the locations of all ancient, veteran and notable trees across the UK. The exercise allowed me to gain valuable surveying experience as well as improving my tree identification skills! One major tree we got to record was ‘Hangman’s Oak’. This ancient tree is on the grounds of Shane’s Castle estate. It was a very impressive specimen, with a girth measurement of over six metres! Trees like this are very important as they provide the perfect home for thousands of plants, animals, insects and fungi, including many rare and threatened species. This information can then be fed into the Woodland Trust database to help map these trees all over the UK. So not only did I get some practical surveying experience, I can feel good that I did my part in the recording and protection of some of our oldest trees alive today.
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