Since its formation FoSL has paid for and built five bird hides, elbow resting posts, various viewing platforms, over 500 metres of fencing, three fixed gates with accompanying notice boards, five disabled pedestrian gates, bird feeders and nest boxes. It has planted 700 metres of country hedges and more than 50 alder, oak and wild cherry trees. It has built a sluice along the long drainage ditch and helped eradicate Japanese knotweed from the reserve. Regular, routine maintenance work has included grass cutting and collection in the meadows (at a cost of £1,000 per annum), regravelling the tern rafts, keeping reedbeds clear of tree saplings, litter clearing and, in conjunction with the trust, hedge laying and layering.
Over 200 local people have been involved in our work parties, as well as students and teachers from Rickmansworth School. For local junior schools we have led nature walks and for the general public we have led numerous wildlife walks covering birds, wildflowers, butterflies, dragonflies, bees and wasps. We have regularly recorded sightings of birds, flowers, butterflies, dragonflies, spiders and fungi. In 2013 we purchased 350' of Colne riverbank in order to preserve it for wildlife and to protect from developers.
In all this we have worked closely with the Herts & Middlesex Wildlife Trust whose expert advice we always seek before embarking on any major project. In its own right the trust also does a lot of major, valuable work on the reserve. We have also always enjoyed a close relationship with the reserve's owners, Affinity Water.