The 5th annual Essex Wildlife Trust Volunteer Open Day was well attended despite the distinctly wintry weather outside! Over 60 potential and existing volunteers braved the sleet to attend, and signed up for a range of survey opportunities, from winter work parties to advisory roles and practical survey work. Thank you to everybody who attended, we will be contacting you over the next few weeks to follow up on the event.

As well as signing up volunteers for surveys we also wanted to highlight the good work that the Essex Wildlife Trust conservation team staff and volunteers have done over the past year. Recent success stories include:

• Putting up 163 Barn Owl nest boxes across Essex, and ringing 47 chicks as a result!
• Setting up 10 new UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme transects in 2016, and training 20 new volunteers in butterfly surveying
• Developing online surveys and recording information on our records website www.essexwtrecords.org.uk
• Completing a number of river restoration projects in Essex, details on the Essex Rivers Hub
• Breaching the sea wall at our new Fingringhoe Wick nature reserve extension to create new saltmarsh habitat
• Completing over 150km of coastal walkover surveys and signing up 30 new coastal wardens
• Surveying 70 hedgerows in the Birch Living Landscape area to compare their character and condition to others across the county and the UK
• Training over 170 river wardens in Essex to monitor 16 different rivers in the Combined Essex Catchment
• Providing conservation advice, practical management and protection to over 1,500 local wildlife sites (LoWS) across Essex.
• Bringing water voles back to Essex rivers including a translocation and reintroduction project on the River Stort
• Working with developers and local authorities to encourage best practice in protecting wildlife

We have worked across the county in 2015 to complete a number of ambitious projects and hope to continue the good work this year. Keep up to date with our progress here!