Community Nature Reserve Launches!

Launch Event Report by Kelly Allen

On Thursday 19^th January at 7:30 pm we held our launch event in Emerson Green Village Hall.  We had some great speakers; Chris Sunderland gave a passionate introduction to the idea of community nature reserves,  Dave Tibbatts from Commons Connections, Common Connections project gets green light | Newsroom (southglos.gov.uk) then gave a presentation showing how the Community Nature Reserve fits into aspirations to improve wildlife corridors across South Glos.  Sophie Bancroft from Avon Wildlife Trust Wildlife Gardening Team Wilder | Avon Wildlife Trust gave us lots of ideas for what we can do in our own gardens to encourage wildlife and local counsellor Bobbie Sunderland rounded things off by announcing the winner of our logo competition, explaining the practicalities of how a community nature reserve works and taking questions from the audience.

We had a fantastic attendance of over 50 people, many of whom stayed to enjoy refreshments afterwards and look at the display of bat boxes, bird boxes, hedgehog houses and a mini pond kindly brought along by Avon Wildlife Trust.

Now we need to encourage as many people to register as possible and start planning our events for 2023.  Feedback from the launch is that people want to connect in person as a community as well as having a Facebook group – (5) EGTC Community Nature Reserve | Facebook    

If you have any particular interest or skills you would like to share with the wider group do let us know, the organising committee can work with you and support you in this.  Some ideas: carpentry to make bird boxes and bug hotels, bee keeping, bird feeding and identification, growing your own veg.  You don’t have to be an expert this is very much about sharing knowledge locally, neighbour to neighbour.

If you have any suggestions of events you would like to see, please let us know.  We really want two-way communications to make this a lively and vibrant project that reflects our community.  Our plans so far are:-

-Bird box building

-Community litter picks

-Open gardens day – showing real gardens (weeds included) with practical examples of things people do for wildlife.

-Stands at the local festivals

-Engaging with local schools

Finally thank you all for your support in getting this project off the ground.