Highlights 2007-8
The year 2007-8 was a busy and exciting one for the Wildlife Trust. We will be publishing our formal Report and Accounts and accompanying Annual Review later in 2008, but for the moment here is a brief roundup of our activity:
Inspiring People
The Wildlife Trust received recognition for its work to bring people and wildlife together for a better future, when it featured in BBC Documentary on “The Future of Conservation” presented by naturalist and wildlife photographer Chris Packham.
The People and Wildlife team had its first full year of operation, delivering practical conservation projects across the area, such as a fantastic shelter in green timber at Birmingham Botanic Gardens. The team also created many new opportunities for volunteers to get actively involved in conservation work for the first time.
Increased media coverage of Trust’s work brought us to the attention of an ever wider audience. The Wildlife Trust co-ordinates International Dawn Chorus Day, and the 2007 day was highly successful with a huge number of events held across the UK. We also saw great improvements to this website!
It was a good year for our education centres. Negotiations were completed for the establishment of a new environmental education centre to serve the Black Country. The Moorcroft Centre will be open to schools in September 2008. Following a few years of transition, the EcoPark is now well established as an environmental education centre, serving schools in the east of Birmingham. It also serves as the operational base for our People and Wildlife team. Over the year tremendous progress was made with the refurbishment of the Centre of the Earth with support (both money and volunteers) from nPower.
Creating Wildlife Havens
Considerable work has been carried out at our Park Hall nature reserve in Birmingham, reducing the use of the site by off-road motorbikes and erecting fences that will allow us to reintroduce grazing. Despite a huge flood in 2007, ongoing survey work continues to uncover an astonishing diversity of rare and important species there.
A highly successful partnership project with Walsall Council reached its conclusion with the declaration of Mill Lane and Barr Beacon as Local Nature Reserves. This allowed the borough to reach its target of 1 hectare of Local Nature Reserve for every 1,000 people, a significant achievement. The success of this project has led to much closer Wildlife Trust involvement with the management of Moorcroft Wood LNR, also in Walsall.
A major bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for Moseley Bog LNR in Birmingham was unsuccessful, but we have been invited to re-apply with modified proposals.
Acting as Wildlife Champions
The Wildlife Trust took the leading voluntary sector role in the development of the Black Country Urban Park, alongside the four Black Country local authorities, the Black Country Consortium and British Waterways. The climax was a TV vote on for “The Peoples £50 million” BIG Lottery grant, sadly we came a creditable second, ahead of the Eden Project and Sherwood Forest. Despite the disappointment, the effort is not waste as some solid partnerships were established and the robust project plans and proposals are already moving forward, though not at the scale and speed that the BIG grant would have allowed.
We met with numerous local MPs. We attended a Wildlife Trust reception at the Houses of Parliament to raise awareness of landscape scale conservation issues. We also met with MPs in their own constituencies, including Ian Pearson MP, Rob Marris MP and Clare Short MP.
This was the first full year for the Biodiversity Action Plan Coordinator, and excellent progress was made with revision of the Biodiversity Action Plan.
Working alongside partners including Friends of the Earth, the RTPI and the CPRE we achieved considerable success in influencing revision of the Regional Spatial Strategy. One important outcome is the emerging Environmental Infrastructure Plan for the Black Country.
We worked alongside many companies to encourage and support them in taking practical action for wildlife. Examples include Severn Trent, Cadburys, nPower, HSBC and Tarmac.
Promoting Sustainable Living
In November 2007 the Wildlife Trust held a successful conference, chaired by Chris Packham, addressing the impact of climate change on wildlife in the West Midlands.
Neighbourhood Nature in Blakenall was recognised with two important awards – one from Britain in Bloom, the other being recognition for project officer Julia Morris as a Walsall ‘community champion’.
Developing our Organisation
The Wildlife Trust’s accounts have yet to be audited, but current figures show that we significantly increased our activity and fundraising performance generally in line with the targets in our business plan. We greatly improved our financial management systems, allowing us to deal more effectively with the increased complexity resulting from the significant increases in our activity over recent years.
Progress with growing our membership was disappointing - not only are our members an important source of funding for our work, but they also are our main source of volunteers and trustees. They are also our eyes and ears, alerting us to issues and sending us wildlife records. membership also allows us to be in contact with people, helping them to be better informed about local wildlife and environmental issues.
The Wildlife Trust put a lot of effort into building and developing relationships with our partners, particularly in promoting landscape-scale conservation.
The health and safety of our staff and volunteers, as well as the many users of our sites and services is always one of our top concerns. This year we made further improvements to our systems for monitoring and recording our health and safety performance.
Land Care Associates, our subsidiary ecological consultancy, completed a wider range of work, chiefly dealing with protected species such as bats, badgers, slowworms, amphibians and black redstarts. As well as ensuring that these vulnerable species are dealt with positively and responsibly by developers and land managers, LCA also made an important contribution to funding the Wildlife Trust’s work.