Impact Report 2019
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60TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION Impact Report 2019 Love Essex • Love Wildlife 2 | Essex Wildlife Trust Impact Report 2019 WORKING TOGETHER FOR WILDLIFE WORKING TOGETHER FOR WILDLIFE Essex Wildlife Trust Impact Report 2019 | 3 ‘ESSEX WILDLIFE TRUST TRULY IS A BEACON OF Contents LIGHT AND POSITIVITY A shining light 4 IN DIFFICULT TIMES’ Working together for wildlife 5 Keeley Hazelhurst Protecting wildlife 6 Chair, Essex Wildlife Trust Demonstrating wildlife gain 7 Maximising the conservation value of land and sea 8 Championing key species 9 In a nutshell: a summary of our impact 10 Inspiring a lifelong love of nature 12 Creating places of wonder 13 Delivering outstanding outdoor learning 14 Growing wildlife supporters 15 The good, the bad and the ugly 16 We couldn’t do it without you 17 Financial summary 18 Essex Wildlife Trust Abbotts Hall Farm The next decade 19 Great Wigborough Colchester Essex CO5 7RZ E [email protected] www.essexwt.org.uk Registered Charity No. 210065 Company Registered No. 638666 VAT Registered No. 945 7459 77 Front cover photo: Mark Hamblin/2020VISION Published August 2020 Photo: Guy Edwardes/2020VISION 4 | Essex Wildlife Trust Impact Report 2019 WORKING TOGETHER FOR WILDLIFE WORKING TOGETHER FOR WILDLIFE Essex Wildlife Trust Impact Report 2019 | 5 A shining light Working together for wildlife Essex Wildlife Trust truly is a beacon of light In our 60th anniversary year, we continued to and positivity in difficult times. improve our conservation outcomes, our education, our membership base, media profile, online presence, I am so proud of the way the whole team has responded to the current COVID crisis with kindness and care and optimism, and to the climate crisis with passion, partnership development, organisational culture commitment and action. Our staff and volunteers are truly inspirational. and commercial income. It is difficult to look back on 2019 in isolation and not reflect upon the huge changes Our Annual General Meeting in September was the culmination of a year to the world in 2020. What should be a celebration of all the amazing achievements of celebration. Award-winning naturalist broadcaster, Steve Backshall, drew of Essex Wildlife Trust seems insensitive at a time when many have lost loved ones, a sell-out crowd in the evening for our largest ever fundraising event, which Keeley Hazelhurst Andrew Impey incomes are less secure, and the nation’s health has been severely impacted. raised £8k for wildlife conservation and engaged new audiences for the Trust. Chair Chief Executive Officer After a night of fascinating tales and nail-biting videos, Steve stayed on at Essex Wildlife Trust 2019 was our 60th anniversary – a time to reflect on the impact we have had on Essex Wildlife Trust Abberton Reservoir until long past midnight, signing books and posing for Essex over the years. Many of our success stories are not single events, but the photos until every last family had been given the chance to meet him. culmination of years of work by dedicated staff. For instance, a 25-year project which has seen the recovery of the otter population in Essex, or the long-standing Our anniversary year also saw our beloved badger logo given a much-needed Forest School programmes, inspiring primary school children and their families facelift, as we revamped our visual identity and Brand Guidelines. ‘Boris the to get outside and enjoy nature. Badger’ was transformed into a more modern incarnation, ‘Billie the Badger’, who has become the new gender-neutral emblem of the Trust, retaining the New events such as Wildfest and Plasticology workshops connect us with best of our heritage and tradition but moving with the times, capturing younger audiences, whilst our Local Groups and events continue to engage the energy and ambition of Essex Wildlife Trust for the decade ahead. with long-standing members. Never before has the importance of our connections with each other and with nature been more apparent. Our ability to protect wildlife and inspire a lifelong love of nature is in large part determined by our effectiveness as an organisation. People are the lifeblood of Essex Wildlife Trust is being proactive to ensure the best possible conditions the Trust; our staff, volunteers, members, and supporters, all acting for wildlife. for wildlife at our 101 stunning sites; we are continuing to campaign, lobby It was therefore heartening to be awarded 1 Star status by Best Companies in 2019, and consult on projects which impact nature; and to teach, inspire and share the organisational equivalent of a Michelin Star. Furthermore, we retained our the beautiful world we have around us. place in the Sunday Times Top 100 Best Not-for-Profit Organisations in the UK, a significant accolade for a county-based charity. Our staff, volunteers and members provide the spark of light, the inspiration for Essex Wildlife Trust and for our county, and may it continue for another Among the many inspiring achievements of volunteers, Ray Marsh, our warden 60 years! at Skipper’s Island for 60 years, and a pioneer of nature conservation from the 1950s onwards, received a national award for volunteering, The Cadbury Medal, which is awarded to only a single recipient annually. The symmetry in our sixtieth anniversary year speaks for itself. I hope you enjoy reading about this year’s successes, which are your successes as much as ours. It fills me with enormous pride to reflect on what we have achieved together as a conservation charity over the past 60 years, and how vitally important our work continues to be. With the climate and ecological crisis, our work is more important than ever. There is much to do. 6 | Essex Wildlife Trust Impact Report 2019 WORKING TOGETHER FOR WILDLIFE WORKING TOGETHER FOR WILDLIFE Essex Wildlife Trust Impact Report 2019 | 7 Demonstrating wildlife gain One of the many new projects we developed in 2019 was Share Our Shores, a partnership project with the RSPB, which you’ll be hearing a lot more about in the coming years. As the human population of Essex grows, we must protect our breeding wildlife. Share Our Shores is one of our first ‘behaviour change’ projects at the Trust. The aim is to increase the populations of important and iconic beach-nesting birds, such as the tiny little tern, the ringed plover, and the brightly beaked oystercatcher, by creating ideal nesting sites and reducing recreational disturbance. Among the most exciting projects to come to fruition in 2019 has been the Essex Barn Owl Conservation Project. In the project’s final year of monitoring, we recorded 207 nesting sites, 51 of which were active sites (one or more eggs) compared to 39 in 2018, with a mean brood size of 3 chicks and a nesting success rate of 24%, the highest recorded by the project. Barn owls are one of Essex’s most iconic birds. To see their numbers increasing is fantastic. 2019 was a significant year for planning casework, one of the most important ways that we influence wildlife gain across the county. We have been involved in green infrastructure planning for the Dunton Hills development in Brentwood, we engaged in the consultation process for Middlewick Ranges in Colchester, and we contributed Protecting to the masterplanning of two strategic housing sites in Chelmsford. We negotiated with the developer of a new housing scheme adjacent to Blue House Farm, the outcome of which was a more sympathetic lighting strategy, and we began work with the Environment Bank on a biodiversity project for Cherry Orchard Jubilee Country Park. A significant amount of work was involved in investigating the planning history that led to habitat damage at Salary Brook in wildlife Colchester, as well as subsequent negotiations. Although we manage over a hundred sites across the county, protecting We also submitted our consultation response to oppose the and enhancing habitats for wildlife, we know that this isn’t enough in development of the Lower Thames Crossing and proposed the context of the climate and ecological crises. Our aim is to enhance a number of large-scale enhancements. and expand our conservation activities, not just preserve the wildlife we already have for posterity. This is just a snapshot of some of our additional projects and activities in 2019. Photo: Bertie Gregory/2020VISION 8 | Essex Wildlife Trust Impact Report 2019 WORKING TOGETHER FOR WILDLIFE WORKING TOGETHER FOR WILDLIFE Essex Wildlife Trust Impact Report 2019 | 9 Photo: Terry Whittaker/2020VISION Photo: Nick Upton/Cornwall Wildlife Trust Maximising the conservation Championing value of land and sea key species Following extensive campaigning and lobbying by a full invertebrate survey which has been crucial in 2019 saw the reintroduction of beavers in Essex for This year, in collaboration with the Southern Colour The Wildlife Trusts, two new Marine Conservation informing the management plan. The team have already the first time in 400 years. Working in partnership with Ringing Group, we also expanded our pioneering Zones (MCZs) were designated in Essex in 2019: Kentish started on some important habitat enhancements for Spains Hall Estate, where the pair of Eurasian beavers satellite tagging project to track how dark-bellied brent Knock East and Swanscombe. We have been committed key invertebrate species. are based, we have been mapping and monitoring the geese use the Essex coastline over winter and to follow to the development of marine designations for a number beaver enclosure and recording changes to habitats. their journey back to their breeding grounds in Siberia, of years, which strengthen the UK’s nature recovery There are now open areas of acid grassland habitat Beavers are ecosystems engineers, transforming a 2,500-mile migration. The dark-bellied brent goose network at sea. They build on the designation of our within Little Haven, Pound Wood, Valerie Wells and the land and creating new habitats for other species.