Share

The people making a difference for wildlife

Photo by Megan Grainger

Trainee Laura highlights the many ways our amazing volunteers look after wildlife in Worcestershire...
Four volunteers working in the heathland in an outdoor site

Volunteers at The Devil's Spittleful by Wendy Carter

By now, you’ve heard from everyone in this year’s trainee intake, so it’s back to me again to write the blog for August. I could write about what our team of five have been up to recently - 4x4 and trailer training, building bridges, brushcutting, thistle/ragwort pulling (and pulling, and pulling). But that’s been written about before. 

Today I’ve been out with the rovers; these are the Trust’s group of wandering volunteers, meeting every Tuesday and Thursday to do whatever needs doing, wherever needs doing it. Joined by the regular Lower Smite Farm volunteers, they enjoyed a tour of the Worcestershire Sandlands (Blackstone Farm Fields, The Devil’s Spittleful and Dropping Well Farm) with reserves officer Andy Harris.

The importance of the volunteers to conservation work on the reserves really can’t be understated. If a minibus of rovers arrives on a site, they can do in a day what might take a single officer a fortnight to achieve. Their drive to turn up on a Tuesday morning and pull ragwort from a hay meadow all day in the baking sun, then come back on Thursday to pull Himalayan balsam on another nature reserve, before returning the following Tuesday to pull thistles elsewhere seems unfailing. I’m a fair few years younger than most of the rovers (mostly retirees) and my back definitely hurts at the end of the day. Some of them have been volunteering with the Trust for nearly 20 years. So they must be enjoying it.

The five reserves officers have a lot of paperwork to do in the background - managing stewardship schemes for the 20-odd reserves that fall in each territory, organising contractors to do large building works (e.g. reinforcing the bank at The Knapp), writing reports etc. It seems that there are lots of things they would like to do but don’t have the time. Cue the volunteers. There are volunteers working in many departments at the Trust but we, the conservation trainees (also volunteers), are mostly exposed to the volunteers working ‘on the ground’ on practical tasks. In summer this means weed pulling, mowing and hay raking, with survey work where required. It seems that there’s a task to suit everyone’s abilities and I’ve enjoyed meeting new faces doing niche voluntary projects for the Trust, beyond the all-important heavy lifting that the rovers take on. 

I’ve been out a few times with dedicated volunteer Si, who has been visiting one WWT reserve at least twice a week for about five months, using sound recorders to monitor the breeding birds there. Every visit, he finds his sound recorders, replaces the batteries and SD card and moves the recorder around to new territories. Then, at home, he uses AI to analyse the many many hours of recordings and checks it afterwards to see what's been singing where and when. It was really special to get to join him and another amazingly knowledgeable volunteer, Stuart, in a very early morning bird ringing session. The information gathered will be really significant in directing future hedgerow management on the reserve. 

I’ve also met volunteers Alice, Henry and Mo, three budding ecologists who want to help the Trust and enhance their CVs by digitally mapping site infrastructure (think bird boxes, dormouse boxes and the like). We’re working together to teach ourselves to use QGIS, a free digital mapping programme, using The Knapp and Blackhouse Wood for practice. Useful for us - GIS experience is an ‘essential’ on most ecology job adverts - and useful for reserves officer Ellie, who now has up-to-date, accurate information on locations for all the nest boxes that need monitoring next year.

 

A photo of four conservation trainees crouching in front of a small bridge over a stream with hedgerow behind smiling at the camera

Photo by Chloe Hilton

On a Tuesday when we get back to Smite after working off site, I’m always keen (and a little envious) to hear what the farm vols have been up to. They have been keeping up a long history of butterfly, reptile, bird and floral surveys at the farm, and I sometimes see them gathered around a stack of flora, trying to identify whatever unusual plant they’ve found that day. Conservation work is no good without monitoring to see what impacts the management actions are having on biodiversity. I think these volunteers get the best jobs of all, especially when they’re working on their little garden of rare arable weeds nurtured from stock found on the farm. If I could turn that kind of voluntary work into a paid job I would be very happy indeed!

Being able to volunteer is a bit of a privilege; people who need to work don’t have time, for example. But there is a lot to be gained from it, socially, mentally, physically. The commitment of Worcestershire Wildlife Trust’s team of volunteers demonstrates that it must be paying its way - and probably in a different ‘currency’ for every person. In exchange, the volunteers are an invaluable resource, a mix of brains, brawn and banter helping to keep the endless ‘to do’ list in check. Unpaid, but not unappreciated, the Trust knows full well it couldn’t get by without them.

Related blog posts