West Somerset Wildways: An Amazing First 6 Months!
The West Somerset Wildways community wildlife project was launched in April 2023, funded by the HPC Community Fund and the National Lottery Community Fund’s Climate Action Fund under Somerset Wildlife Trust’s ‘Somerset’s Wilder Coast’ initiative.
West Somerset Wildways is primarily a community engagement project, with two key aims:
to enable people of all ages to engage with wildlife through a range of family-friendly activities and events
to support people in using iNaturalist to observe and record wild creatures and plants as a baseline of data for nature recovery
Since the project launch in April 2023, it has run 18 family-friendly wildlife events and activity stalls, 7 youth club sessions and 6 resource-based interactive talks, as well as launching additional iNaturalist projects for Selworthy and Bossington, Heddon Valley and Coast and Horner Wood.
During this time, it has engaged around 900 people in its events and talks, and an average of more than one new observer per day has contributed records to iNaturalist. No wildlife knowledge is needed for this: iNaturalist will suggest IDs. All that’s required is a mobile phone or digital camera and access to the internet. Click here for help getting started with iNaturalist.
Contact Elizabeth Atkinson at wswildways@somersetwildlife.org:
to join West Somerset Wildways’ growing team of volunteers
to book a Wildways session or seek support for your own community group
or to tell us about your own wildlife/biodiversity/nature recovery work in West Somerset
