Clearing the willows was always going to be an epic job. The wetland is about 500m long and up to 150m wide with the majority of it either difficult to access by foot or too deep for machinery. The WGCMA solution was to have a ground crew with chainsaws cutting down whatever could be accessedby foot and then having a long armed excavator remove the felled willows and reach across into the areas that could not be traversed by foot. The felled trees were then piled up into giant mounds for burning the following winter. As the willows were removed a surprising number of healthy tree ferns (Dicksonia Antarctica) were revealed.