WIssue 104 • WINTERil 2015dlife The future in your hands Kevin McCloud Making a difference With your help... our new Vice President the living landscape realising Our Vision Includes UK news & stories Protecting Wildlife for the Future Welcome Dear member We are thrilled to welcome our new honorary Vice President, Kevin McCloud, who adds his support to the Trust’s work. Kevin’s team at HAB Housing is based in Bristol, and earlier this year, his staff gave their time to the Trust for free to build our volunteer cabin at Bennett’s Patch & White’s Paddock. It is a rare partnership between a Wildlife Trust and a housing developer, but as you will read, Kevin and his team have a genuine passion for development that makes space for wildlife, and forming such partnerships is an important part of influencing the future. We welcome Kevin at a critical time, when the four Unitary Dr Bevis Watts Authorities in the West of England are formulating a Joint Spatial Chief Executive, Plan – one which the Trust would like to see take into account the Avon Wildlife Trust ecosystems needed to support a growing population with clean water, clean air and the other services we take for granted, as well as simply for our wellbeing through that connection to nature. We need to be thinking 40 years ahead, protecting, restoring and planting the ecological networks we will need in the future, not simply mitigating individual developments. If mitigation is ad hoc, the continued decline of our ecosystems is inevitable. Through the West of England Nature Partnership, we are working towards a more strategic approach. You will see Kevin adding his voice to that cause in his article. This is an important issue of our magazine, where we profile how much practical work we deliver as an organisation and how that is only possible with your support. This year we have undertaken two major land-management projects at Prior’s Wood and Walton Common, and what follows will give you a flavour of the great work our team and volunteers have done. These projects are also great examples of how the Trust works in decades with visions of achieving real benefits for wildlife for the longer-term. In our 2014-15 Annual Review, recently published on our website, we reported that the number of people volunteering with the Trust last year nearly doubled to 1,538, delivering approximately 9,500 volunteer days. This is an incredible statistic and really demonstrates how the Trust is at the centre of a movement, serving as an enabler and advisor to those wanting to care for and take action for the natural world. And as you will read, we have the potential to do even more, and with additional funding from your membership donations, we can do just that. Read more on pages 14 and 15. Please help if you can, and enjoy the colours and sights of autumn! Autumn beech leaves at Brown’s Folly Your magazine Avon Wildlife Trust is your Edited by Pat Ellingham Trust Office Registered local wildlife charity working Design by Kevin Lester 32 Jacobs Wells Road, Bristol BS8 1DR charity no. to secure a strong future Print by Burleigh Portishead 0117 917 7270 280422 [email protected] for the natural environment Front cover images: Hedgehog: Staffan avonwildlifetrust.org.uk Registered and to inspire people. Widstrand, Naturepl.com; Kevin and Bevis: company no. Folly Farm Centre THE Barbara Evridipou. Boy: James Beck. 1495108 With the support of 17,000 Stowey, Pensford, Bristol BS39 4DW Thank you to all contributors, especially members, the Trust cares for 01275 331590 Matt Collis, Matt Cracknell, Bernie D’Arcy, 37 nature reserves, it runs [email protected] TRUSTS Julie Doherty, Janice Gardiner, Matt Harcourt, educational and community follyfarm.org Jade Preddy, Joe McSorley, Simon Martin Wildlife magazine programmes, advises Portbury Wharf All uncredited photos © Avon Wildlife Trust is printed using A VON landowners, and campaigns A&W Building, The Docks, 100% renewable The views expressed in this magazine are on issues that threaten Newfoundland Way, Portishead energy on 100% not necessarily those of the Editor or the wildlife habitats. BS20 7DF recycled paper. Trustees of Avon Wildlife Trust. 01275 817710 2 Wildlife WINTER 2015 WINTER 2015 In this issue Introducing... Spotlight on... 4 n Our new Vice President 28 n Guest member – Kevin McCloud Amy Coulthard Wild news Folly Farm Centre 6 n Our latest news and 29 n A summer in project updates abundance! Feature – The future Across the UK in your hands 30 n UK News - 10 n On our reserves Every child wild 12 n A Living Landscape 32 n UK News - Around the Trusts 14 n How you can help 34 n Living Seas Hands on – Making 36 n Great days out – a difference! saltmarsh and estuary 16 n My Wild City Avon Wildlife Trust 1 7 n The last hedgehog 38 n Autumn ID – Fungus foray 1 8 n In the community 39 n Who’s who at the Trust 19 n Feed Bristol Postscript... 20 n Every Child Wild 40 n From Trust Chair, 21 n Team work Roz Kidman Cox What’s on Follow us on Facebook and 22 n Meet a Local Group Twitter for the latest news member! and events. Please share your wildlife pictures and 23 n Events experiences! Teachers can check out the Ways into wildlife blog at wildschools.org.uk 24 n Around the reserves and follow @wildschools. Go to the website to sign up 25 n Green volunteer! for eshots and event alerts! 26 n Seasonal stroll – /avonwt /avonwt Brown’s Folly The hedgehog We mean no harm. We want Shares its secret with no one. Only to listen to what We say, Hedgehog, come out You have to say. Of yourself and we will DICK ELLINGHAM love you. Paul Muldoon Hedgehog from Poems 1968-1998 WINTER 2015 Wildlife 3 WILD NEWS Introducing our new Vice President – Kevin McCloud BARBARA EVRIDIPOU BARBARA t is an honour to be garden collectively, plant trees and when neighbour meets neighbour associated with the consider how the spaces between which is why so many of the resources Avon Wildlife Trust buildings, whether private or public can we incorporate into projects, such and the brilliant work act as a conduit for wildlife movement. as car clubs, allotments, incidental it does. ForI that matter, it’s a privilege This idea lies at the heart of My Wild food growing, water storage and for any one of us to care for our City, a wonderful initiative from the play space, are shared. This reduces wildlife and make a contribution to Trust. Think of a city like an organism residents’ collective environmental the preservation, enhancement and even the creation of new habitats. It’s Think of a city like an organism that needs something I particularly enjoy doing on my farmland – if you haven’t yet tried feeding. Its vitality comes from the green it, build a small pond in your garden connective tissue, the gardens, plants and and watch as the frogs, toads, newts, dragonflies and water boatmen take trees that we nourish. ownership of it. Or sow a stretch of wildflower seeds on a patch of poor that needs feeding. Its vitality comes footprints, provides for greater ground and wait for the goldfinches from the green connective tissue, resilience, interdependence and social and linnets to arrive. Miraculously, these the gardens, plants and trees that sustainability, and frankly is more fun. species, and the flowers and seeds of we nourish. Collectively, with enough We aim always to build and improve the plants they live on, serve as food critical mass, the living environment biodiversity at the same time. Buildings for a wide range of birds and bats that can become as powerful as the built can accommodate birds, bats and bees will visit you. And so a great chain of one in Bristol. Sustained like this, it has as well as humans, and gabion walls wildlife come to enjoy what you have the power to nourish us back. provided in a rich complexity that no man could ever construct. The spaces inbetween I know this to be a fact because my Green connective tissue business, HAB, which is based in But major ecological improvement Bristol, builds housing schemes where will not happen if we dot havens just the quality of the public realm – the here and there. For wildlife to flourish spaces in between buildings – is in our cities and suburbs we need to sacrosanct. HAB builds not only houses join up habitats and provide wildlife (which are always low energy) but also corridors, stepping stones for insects, communities; we know that the most mammals and birds in an effort to valuable human interactions happen Goldfinch GILLIAN DAY 4 Wildlife WINTER 2015 SE 1 WEBSITE Elephant and Castle Urban Forest and hedges are much more animal- point to the City. Personally, I’d like friendly than a brick wall. We also make a network of green gateways, some sure that wherever possible the planted of them single site projects, others components of our schemes work perhaps community projects where symbiotically with the architecture to residents ‘join up’ their front gardens to provide local micro-climate, water- create linear landscapes. It’s then just attenuation, summer shading and a short step to the establishing of rich humidity control. In other words, the wildlife corridors throughout the cities. hard-built stuff we construct works Bristol is poised to do this. It is a BURKMARR RICHARD with, rather than against, the natural remarkably progressive place, thanks world.