Devon Wildlife Trust

The “Wild Ones” launch new campaign at St Nicholas’ School!

admin — Thu, 09 May 2013 10:19:52 +0000

The Wildlife Champions at St Nicholas’ Primary School (renamed “The Wild Ones”) have just launched on a new campaign to try to improve their school grounds for wildlife. Teaming up with Year 3 and 4 who have been learning all about Bees, thanks to Western Power Distribution, the students are planning cake sales in order to raise some money to change the school grounds by adding wild flowers and other wildlife friendly features. I have enjoyed time working with the students and they have really learned so much about bees and why we should look after them. They are planning to encourage the rest of the school and their parents to take more care over the bees they may find in their garden! Well done guys – a great project, we look forward to hearing more about it soon. Paul

St Leonards Champions get stuck in!

admin — Thu, 09 May 2013 10:00:46 +0000

A beautiful sunny afternoon at St Leonards Primary School saw a group of students from the Green Team getting stuck into some planning for their environment garden and clearing some of the dead plants and rubbish from their pond. Having shown me their amazing bottle greenhouse with upcycled pallets as benches the students showed a great appetite for exploring their pond (which has the most amazing structure over it!) and removing the dead plants from the edges. Most impressive to me was the brave student who overcame her fears of all things crawly to hold a shield bug for the first time!! That’s what wildlife champions are made of!!! I really enjoyed being with you and am looking forward to coming for some more soon…Paul

admin — Thu, 02 May 2013 14:53:35 +0000

It’s hard for us to believe but we’ve now been with DWT for six months. It’s been a busy time that has seen us losing our wellies in mires, lost on foggy moors, and waist deep in muddy ditches which pong. We have, however, enjoyed working on the reserves and experiencing the wide variety of habitats that DWT looks after. To help preserve these habitats we’ve carried out lots of scrub clearance and selective felling with chainsaws, mostly birch, willow and gorse. As well as felling trees we’ve also planted trees, sounds like a contradiction but it’s what and where that counts! The work has also involved mending fencing for stock control, boardwalk repairs so our visitors can continue to enjoy the reserves with relative ease, coppicing, swaling (very exciting, and can turn a freezing wintry day into a blaze of heat) and hedge laying. Some of our more entertaining moments have been trying to master the bowline knot for use when winching trees (turns out this is far more complicated than just a rabbit, a hole, and a tree) and we’re experts at getting our ‘off road’ landrovers bogged down!
As well as learning from practical tasks we’ve also ‘bandaged each other up’ in first aid training, completed two chainsaw courses and next month we’ll attend a brushcutter course.
The winter work is coming to an end now and we’ll soon start carrying out more wildlife surveys. We’ve already seen the first butterflies (comma, tortoiseshell and brimstone) and reptiles like common lizards, and an adder which was happy to pose for a picture.

More meadow planting at Countess Wear

admin — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:07:34 +0000

A beautiful sunny day (with a bit of a cold wind!) marked the start of a brilliant morning of wildlflower planting with students from Countess Wear Primary School. The students were amazing, creating new and exciting ways to make sure that the seeds were well spread and stomped into the ground! The most impressive of these was becoming human rollers! The three patches of planting are located right outside the door of the school and the children are looking forward to watching the seeds develop. Thanks to all the staff and students, they worked so hard and made the day a huge success! Paul

Our ‘Plant Your Park’ project is part of the Exeter Wild City initiative and has been made possible thanks to a grant from the Big Lottery Fund (Awards for All).

The Big Lottery Fund is the largest distributor of National Lottery good cause funding across the UK. The Fund aims to enable others to make real improvements to communities and the lives of people most in need.

Snowdrops – and what comes after…

admin — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:54:18 +0000

‘Every year the snowdrops get better and better. They grow around the base of a large Acer in the front garden. They were getting rather choked last year and so I thinned them out after they flowered and spread them out further from the tree and scattered them in new places in the garden. This year they look like they need thinning again so next year all the beds will have a covering of these dainty flowers in January. Apparently the bulbs are very poisonous, which always worried me when my daughter would help transplant the bulbs that had been dislodged from the border. However, we’ve always told them which plants are poisonous and so far they haven’t experimented to see if mummy and daddy were right.

Beneath the snowdrops Pulmonarias (Lungwort) have been planted and they have now pushed through as the snowdrops have faded and their brilliant blue flowers are being enjoyed by bees. They have spread nicely and provide great ground cover and interest once the little snowdrops have gone. Snowdrops are apparently the flower of hope, so I’m hoping that their brilliant display means fine summer weather to enjoy our garden this year.’

Follow Catherine Burgess’ tips on gardening for wildlife on http://www.devonwildlifetrust.org/blog

New flower meadow planted by Maynard

admin — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:08:05 +0000

The second meadow planting in our “Plant your Park” project saw 13 students from The Maynard school busily raking sowing and stamping the seeds into their local park. A very enthusiastic group of girls and staff set to work preparing the ground, making sure the seeds could grow without too much competition. There were a few disturbances to examine the many worms that appeared but it wasn’t long before the seed sowing was in full flow. We have also managed to invent a new way of stamping the seeds in with a variety of skipping, jumping and Hokey-Kokey moves being used to great effect! Another brilliant morning and we wait to see what positive impact this will have on the local wildlife when the girls come back to survey again later in the year. Thanks everyone!! Paul

Our ‘Plant Your Park’ project is part of the Exeter Wild City initiative and has been made possible thanks to a grant from the Big Lottery Fund (Awards for All).

Plant your Park project launches in Exeter

admin — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:42:29 +0000

The students from St Michael’s and Ladysmith Junior school came together this week to help launch the “Plant your Park” project in Exeter, which aims to transform twelve public spaces across the city by sowing wildflower seeds onto areas kindly prepared by the City Council. The students worked hard to prepare the ground before scattering a mixture of annual and perennial seeds which should create a wonderful display for all users of the area. This will also benefit the local wildlife, particularly the bees, butterflies and other nectar loving species so the students completed a survey whilst on site so that they could come back and compare the difference in a few months. Thanks to everyone who got involved, it was a great way to start the project – watch this space for more exciting news about which areas are being changed! Paul

Our ‘Plant Your Park’ project is part of the Exeter Wild City initiative and has been made possible thanks to a grant from the Big Lottery Fund (Awards for All).

BBC spotlight River Otter fish passage

admin — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:10:42 +0000

Maybe some of you will have see BBC south west spotlight programme on Friday 8th March? I was invited to speak concerning the River Otter and a new fish pass that is under construction.

After the year we have had for flooding I can understand why communities would question the Environment Agency (EA) decision to spend money on fish passage alongside flood risk schemes.

On face value sounds fair enough?

Well let’s dive into this a little further and not forget the “value” of a healthy river to us all and that our migratory fish species such as Sea trout, Salmon & Eel are an important part of this “healthy status”. They also play a part in the ecosystem that we all love to see on the River, I’ve lost count of the number of excited people I meet who mention kingfishers and otters.

In addition to this one of the principle things to remember is that in most cases a healthy river does have the potential to cope with flood incidents in a natural way. We have manipulated rivers for our own gain for hundreds of years; working towards restoring waterways will help us with flood risk in the future.

Finally I think the EA often are the focus of attention and criticism on how they spend our money but let’s not forgot the challenges and difficulties they face balancing aspects like flood risk and healthy rivers in today’s world of cuts and austerity.

This is a massive task for EA and although it may seem like they make confusing decisions, I know from working closely with the EA that there is a great deal of work going on behind the scenes prioritising environmental work.

It’s all about balance and understanding how all these processes work together to provide a river catchment that protects us as well offering us with a huge sense of social well being.

Food for thought!

Two more bee gardens made at Clyst Heath Primary School

admin — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:42:21 +0000

The brilliant reception class at Clyst Heath Primary School have joined the growing number of children learning about bees. They had already been learning about minibeasts, asking the question “Are all minibeasts bad for the garden?” so concentrating their efforts on the bees for a day was very exciting. They spent the morning creating beautiful mobiles and craft bees to take home then worked really hard in the afternoon to dig two new patches of garden which were sown with bee friendly wildflower seeds. So much effort went into clearing the ground I was really impressed at the way the children stuck at it and spread the seeds nicely all over the spaces. I wonder how many bees you will get visiting this year?? What a wonderful way to spend the day. Thank you all. Paul

Redhills get creative for bees!

admin — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:53:38 +0000

Students at Redhills Primary School have been getting creative in their support for the “Briliant Bees” work supported by Westrern Power Distribution. More fabulous facts about the species of bee found in Britain were discovered before the children set about writing poetry, drawing campaign posters and building their own bee hotels out or recycled materials. The interest and energy that the students put into their day was quite inspiring and I enjoyed reading the results of some of the work. Everybody took a bee hotel home! What a difference these children are trying to make! Thanks for getting involved and for a thoroughly enjoyable day! Paul