Environment

Walking and talking about climate change

SOMERSET Wildlife Trust has launched a new mobile app offering self-guided walks exploring the county and looking at how nature can help tackle climate change.

The app – free to download – also invites people to add their thoughts and ideas, which will help the project teams develop climate adaptation plans with input from the wider community.

Designed by partnership project CoAdapt, Somerset Trails is funded by Somerset Rivers Authority and the EU’s Intereg 2Seas Programme. The app combines walking maps with videoguided tours, including a section specially designed for children. Whilst on the trail, video content, that was filmed on location, is triggered at key points, featuring tour guides such as Somerset Wildlife Trust’s Shelly Easton, as well as local experts. The trails talk about landscape features, climate change and how nature-based solutions can be used to help us adapt.

The first trail to be launched begins in the centre of Wedmore, taking in views across the Somerset Levels, and meanders through meadows, past dew ponds and over historic ridge and furrow field systems. A second trail will be launched by the National Trust, featuring behind-the-scenes footage of one of their most intriguing projects –beaver reintroduction and stage zero river restoration on Exmoor.

For younger walkers on the Wedmore

Iona, one of the guides on the Wedmore trail

trail, eight-year-old tour guide Iona leads the way in a section called Kids Corner and said: “I think people are going to have a lot of fun coming on the walk, and they’re going to learn lots about climate change and what people are doing about it in Somerset.”

Jolyon Chesworth, head of engagement at the trust, said: "Climate change is a scary issue and sometimes so overwhelming that as individuals we can feel helpless. By following the trails on the app we can help people explore some of Somerset’s most beautiful areas and learn about how nature can help us adapt to what is coming if we look after it.

“As a dad I sometimes find it hard to talk to my children about climate change. It will affect their lives and they need to learn about it so they can be part of the solution, but equally we don’t want to scare them.

Somerset county councillor David

A view from Wedmore A screenshot from the app

Hall, Cabinet Member for Economic Development, Planning and Community Infrastructure and chair of Somerset Rivers Authority, added: "This brilliant Somerset project is once again leading the way in generating awareness and ideas about how we can adapt to the effects of climate change. Recent flooding events in the county have served as a reminder that we need to be more prepared for changing weather patterns and this app shows everyone how important their actions can be to finding the solutions.”

Scouting around for biodiversity

A GROUP of scouts has been helping volunteers to remove vegetation at Worlebury Camp Iron Age hillfort on the edge of Weston-super-Mare.

The hillfort is a Scheduled Monument which was placed on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register due to threats from vegetation and trees to the nationally significant archaeology.

North Somerset Council has been working with volunteers in the Worlebury Hillfort Group since 2016 to reveal new areas of the hillfort by removing vegetation. The scouts, from the 1st Ashcombe group spent two sessions working with the volunteers at the hillfort. They previously worked with the volunteers in 2019 and the area they cleared then is now affectionately called “Scouts Glade”.

The work they carried out will help them towards earning a variety of different badges including World Challenge, Heritage, Environmental and Team Work. William Fraher, of the Worlebury Hillfort Group, said: “It was great to see the scouts working so hard to improve biodiversity. They seemed very interested in the way the fort showed how people lived 2,500 years ago.”

Scouts and volunteers on Worlebury Camp hillfort

For more on Worlebury Camp hillfort visit: www.nsomerset.gov.uk/hillfort or https://www.worleburyhillfortgroup.com/

Helping hedgehogs

PRICKLES Hedgehog Rescue, in Cheddar, suggests placing water in shallow containers in gardens to help hedgehogs during warm, dry spells.

Also make sure your shed and garage doors stay closed, poisons are out of reach, and check before strimming or using lawnmowers. Call Prickles if you see a small hog out during the day by itself.

Details: 07806 744772

Poetry message to COP26 leaders

POET Jessica Swales, from Kilmersdon, is one of 26 writers who have explored some of the UK’s most distinctive and important habitats and wild places for an online awareness campaign ahead of the COP26 climate conference.

Each writer composed a poem of exactly 100 words, released daily throughout September. The 26Habitats project is a collaboration between writers’ organisation 26 and The Wildlife Trusts movement.

Encouraging wildlife

GREEN Wedmore has launched its latest project, a booklet Wild for Wildlife in Wedmore, which aims to encourage people to attract more wildlife to their gardens.

The booklet contains a wide range of tips and pointers to protect and encourage nature including how to build a pond and how to attract birds, bats, insects, amphibians, hedgehogs and flora, especially wildflowers.

Each section contains a wealth of detail with practical suggestions. The project is part of Green Wedmore’s Carbon and Nature group, showing how the climate and nature emergencies are closely linked as are the solutions.

Steve Mewes, from the group, said: “Nature is a key part of the solution to the climate emergency and it needs our help in the UK which is tragically one of the most nature depleted countries in the world.

“Wild for Wildlife in Wedmore will help encourage everyone on the Isle of Wedmore to garden with natural recovery in mind.”

In addition to the tips in the booklet there is a simple competition for everyone to take part in with the chance to win a certificate, a plaque and to be awarded a Gold Wildlife Star on a future village map.

Grants available

THEMendip Hills Fund is now open for applications after not being able to make any awards in 2020.

The fund is supported by “visitor-giving” schemes such as those at local campsites and outdoor activity centres and event organisers making a donation.

As these businesses had a difficult year and events were cancelled in 2020 contributions to the fund dried up. But recent contributions have enabled the fund to open this year.

Grants will be awarded to support community and voluntary group projects that conserve and enhance the landscape; increase awareness, understanding and enjoyment of the area; support social and economic initiatives including enhancing community facilities or support for start-up of social enterprises, e.g. local food initiatives.

Grants of up to £2,000 are available for projects in the Mendip Hills AONB area through East Mendip to Frome.

Jim Hardcastle, Mendip Hills AONB manager said: “We're really grateful to the local businesses and event organisers that have continued to support the Mendip Hills Fund despite the hardships they went through last year.

“It's more important than ever to help nature across the Mendip Hills. Grants in the past have helped some brilliant projects like restoring a bit of wasteland next to a village hall, providing tools to a conservation group and helping long term unemployed people learn conservation skills."

Details: Jim Hardcastle 01761 462338 Kirsty Campbell SCF 01749 344949 or apply online until October 31st https://www.somersetcf.org.uk/mendip

Making villages greener

(Photo courtesy of Diana Newington,Easton Wildlife Group)

A woodland project at the Jubilee Playing Field in Easton

VILLAGE communities around Wells are being offered grants of up to £500 for small environmental projects with long term benefits.

The scheme has been set up by St. Cuthbert (Out) Parish Council as one of a range of initiatives developed by the council’s Environment Working Group. Tree planting, rewilding, renewable energy projects, repair workshops and improving footpath and cycle links are all listed as examples of what could attract parish council funding.

Group leader Councillor Gill Pettitt said the council is strongly committed to doing all it can to bring about environmental improvements and address climate change issues at local level. She said: “We are very keen to get local community groups involved in this.

“The ideas may be out there already but just need a bit of funding to get them going.”

Easton, Wookey Hole, Coxley, Polsham, Dulcote, Dinder and The Horringtons are amongst the 11 villages served by the parish council.

Supporting the Large Blue

SOMERSETWildlife Trust has launched a new appeal to support the Large Blue butterfly, which was declared extinct in the UK in 1979, but was reintroduced to the South West in the 1980s.

The trust’s Green Down Nature Reserve, near Charlton Mackrell, is now home to the UK’s largest population of Large Blues, but their future is under threat because of climate change.

The drought in 2018 meant fewer red ant grubs and less wild thyme, both vital to Large Blue caterpillars, resulting in a steep fall in numbers in 2019 – from about 9,500 adults in 2018 down to only 3,800. The trust fears this spring’s cold snap will affect numbers too, though it will be 2022 before we know the full impact.

The appeal is raising funds to support important monitoring of populations at Green Down, and to carry out habitat and conservation work to provide the conditions that this rare butterfly needs.

The appeal’s ambition is to help build the population sufficiently, so the Large Blue butterfly can withstand climate shock and can also naturally colonise, or be introduced to, other nearby nature reserves in the Polden Hills.

In addition to the butterfly, the appeal will also benefit other species in the area, including the Shrill Carder Bee, one of the UK’s rarest bumblebees.

Large Blue

Details: https://www.somersetwildlife.org/largeblueappeal 01823 652429 send a cheque made payable to Somerset Wildlife Trust to 34 Wellington Road, Taunton, Somerset, TA1 5AW