River Wardens Newsletter
The first River Wardens Newsletter is available for download here.
The first River Wardens Newsletter is available for download here.
The People's Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) have signed a new agreement with us to make their data available to Essex Wildlife Trust Biological records centre and our partners.
PTES has been helping to ensure a future for many endangered species throughout the world, since 1977. They have a special focus on British mammals (previously known as Mammals Trust UK) and coordinate the National Dormouse Monitoring Programme.
Thank you to PTES for making their data available to us.
The 4th annual Essex WildlifeTrust volunteer open day was the best attended yet. With 80+ potential volunteers expressing interest in joining our survey team, we expanded our displays into an extra room to prevent us from running out of space. Brief presentations about some of the survey opportunities available this year, from river and coastal surveys to butterfly transects and hedgerow surveys, were followed by the opportunity to chat to staff and existing volunteers and sign up for surveys and training. With nearly 60 volunteers signing up on the day for at least one survey, it looks like we are going to be in for a busy year!
Thank you also to our partners at the Essex Bat group, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, Seasearch and the Essex Biodiversity Project for helping to make the day a success. Further details on all the surveys that we are planning this year and on training course dates will be available shortly.
Feedback from this year's event:
"As a "newby", I found the whole event extremely interesting being so well presented by all the Speakers. You all are so very dedicated & I am sure that will rub off on Volunteers."
For a reminder of the surveys we covered, please click here:
A water vole has been delighting Essex Wildlife Trust staff this week with frequent, clear sightings from the office windows of the Trust headquarters at Abbotts Hall Farm. The endearing little mammal has established a burrow in the margins of a large pond in the farm garden, among the roots of a willow tree. It has been seen regularly venturing out onto the bank to forage for grasses, which it has then carried back to store in its burrow. Click here for a link to our Facebook page
More than one in 10 of England’s Local Wildlife Sites have been lost or damaged in the last five years, conservationists say.
Monitoring of 6,590 of the country’s “quiet, unnoticed wild places in which nature thrives” such as ancient woodlands, hedgerows and churchyards revealed that 717 of them had been lost or damaged between 2009 and 2013.
The Wildlife Trusts warn that this is just the tip of the iceberg, with many more of England’s 42,865 Local Wildlife Sites potentially under threat, and the latest losses come in the wake of decades of destruction of natural habitats.
Local Wildlife Sites are not protected by law, but national planning rules require local authorities to identify sites for their wildlife value and provide for their protection under local policy.
They provide homes for wildlife ranging from frog orchids and marsh gentians to grass snakes, harvest mice and water voles, give people access to nature in their local area and provide a network of stepping stones and corridors to connect wild spaces. To read more click here