The Bermuda Audubon Society is seeking planning permission to create a nature trail at Seymours Pond and establish a long-term conservation plan for the reserve.

Society secretary Karen Border said the project, conceived as a way of marking the society’s 60th anniversary, is hoped to make the Southampton nature reserve more accessible to the public.

“Seymour Pond is highly visible, it’s visible from the road, but it has never really been accessible to the public or our members,” she said. “The idea is to create a walking trail that will go around the pond with a little bird blind so that people can come and watch the birds.”

She said the society has been working closely with the Department of Conservation on the project and, if granted planning approval, the trail is hoped to be in place before the end of the year.

According to the Conservation Management Plan, viewable at the Department of Planning offices, the woodlands on the property are currently dominated by fiddlewood, allspice, Brazil pepper, Chinese fan palm, white cedar and Surinam cherry.

As part of the plan, the invasive species would be gradually culled and replaced with endemic plants like Bermuda Cedar.

The pond itself is home to a healthy population of endemic Bermuda killifish — partially as a result of a drought in 2010 which dried the pond and killed the introduced minnows — and is visited by a variety of waterfowl.

Ducks, kingfishers, herons and egrets all feed at the pond, while moorhens, coots and pied-billed grebes have been known to use the area as a breeding ground.

The first phase of the conservation plan focuses on culling invasive plants at the pond edge and carrying out road drainage mediation with the assistance of Works and Engineering.

Phase two will involve planting native plants around the pond and nearby backfilled quarry, while a nature trail and three-sided bird blind will be installed as part of the third phase.

“Access to the reserve will be on foot at the entrance of the farm road on the Barnes’ Corner Nature Reserve to the west of the pond,” the plan states. “The trail will go south along the existing rough farm road, east along the boundary of the arable field and into the Seymour Pond Nature Reserve.

“The trail will head roughly north east through the woodland at some 100ft from the pond edge and then north along the existing perimeter of the pond to the road.”

The bird blind will be erected on the northwest edge of the pond and be accessible via a path leading to and from the trail.

The plan states that no clearing will be needed on the Barnes’ Corner Nature Reserve portion of the trail, while only small fiddlewood and allspice trees, along with Chinese fan palm and Brazil pepper will be cleared for the Seymour Pond Nature Reserve segment.