Wildlife, Biodiversity and Nature Recovery
Current Activities
In 2023, the Green Forum maintained close links with the new Minehead BioBlitz project – a collaboration between the Somerset Wildlife Trust, the National Trust and the Minehead and Coast Development Trust. The Minehead BioBlitz is a collaboration between the Minehead and Coast Development Trust, Somerset Wildlife Trust, Exmoor National Park and the National Trust. The project ran 3 events – in March, June and October 2023.
2023 also saw the launch of the West Somerset Wildways community wildlife project. West Somerset Wildways is coordinated by Elizabeth Atkinson of the Green Forum’s Board of Directors. It is a Somerset Wildlife Trust Wilder Communities project within the Somerset’s Wilder Coast initiative.
West Somerset Wildways is primarily a community engagement project, with two key aims: (1) to enable people of all ages to engage with wildlife through a range of family-friendly activities and events, and (2) to support people in using iNaturalist to observe and record wild creatures and plants as a baseline of data for nature recovery.
In the first 6 months of the project, following its launch in April 2023, it has run 18 family-friendly wildlife events and activity stalls, 7 youth club sessions and 5 resource-based interactive talks, and has launched 3 additional projects on iNaturalist in addition to the West Somerset Wildways project itself – for Selworthy and Bossington, Heddon Valley and Coast and Horner Wood. These projects, and the related site-based events, were created in collaboration with Charlotte Burke of the National Trust’s Exmoor Coast Project.
Additional collaborations for events have been with Exmoor National Park, Watchet Wildlife Group, Carhampton Climate Group (including a Wilder Open Gardens weekend) and Carhampton Gardening Club. Further events and collaborations are planned for 2024.
In its first 6 months, West Somerset Wildways 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.
West Somerset Wildways has a growing team of occasional volunteers, who help out at project events if and when they are available. New volunteers are joining all the time – no specific commitment is required, just an interest in being involved.
Contact Elizabeth Atkinson at wswildways@somersetwildlife.org
(1) to get involved with West Somerset Wildways
(2) to book a Wildways session or seek support for your own community group
(3) or to tell us about your own wildlife/biodiversity/nature recovery work in West Somerset
Wildlife, Biodiversity and Nature Recovery - Past Activities
West Somerset Green Forum has had close links with Somerset Wildlife Trust for many years, promoting the Trust’s local initiatives, including the Somerset’s Brilliant Coast Project.
This included work with Watchet and Minehead on their Plastic Free initiatives as well as coastal walks and events and citizen science initiatives such as the ShoreSearch and Sea Watch projects.
Members of the Green Forum also worked with Timberscombe Eco on the development of their biodiversity action plan. Timberscombe Eco hosted West Somerset Together’s Spring 2022 gathering, which introduced the Wildlife Trust and the Somerset Environmental Records Centre’s Community Wildlife Mapping Project: an initiative aiming to generate a detailed digital map of the county’s nature as a baseline for their 10-year Nature Recovery Programme.
Observations from the project will contribute to the data banks of the Somerset Environmental Records Centre and the National Biodiversity Network, ‘making data work for nature’.
Contact us.
If you’d like to get involved in this project or have ideas you’d like to share, please get in touch.