Hello Team Wilder: Meet the people behind Wild about Loddiswell

Hello Team Wilder: Meet the people behind Wild about Loddiswell

Photo by Lynne Kenderdine 

We are Wild About Loddiswell, a community group based in the village of Loddiswell, in the Avon Valley near Kingsbridge. Our watch words are: “Wildlife, Conservation, Sustainability, Community”.

Our main aim is to enhance the biodiversity of the green spaces in and around Loddiswell to improve them for wildlife and the enjoyment and well-being of the local community.  We also provide hints and tips to encourage people to live more sustainably and to reduce their carbon footprints.

I have always had a passion for wildlife, my husband and I have done what we could over the years to conserve and encourage wildlife on our own patch of land.  With the current climate emergency and the urgent need for action, just concentrating on a small area  is not enough.  We are members of the Devon Wildlife Trust's Avon Valley Project and this is an excellent example of how connectivity can be created over a large area by bringing smaller parcels of land together, like pieces in a giant jigsaw.

I am also a great believer in giving people hope:  faced with the grim consequences of climate change, many of us wonder what we can do to make a difference and it's easy to feel powerless. But there are things that we can all do at home, which might seem small, but could really make a difference, especially if we work together.  Inspired by seeing reports and photos from other parts of the country of roundabouts and roadside verges enhanced with wildflowers.  I wondered if this was something we could emulate with the green spaces around Loddiswell (using locally harvested seed).  Fiona Van Es had already pioneered this by sowing wildflowers on the verges opposite the new housing estate, where the hedge had been removed, and they look stunning in the early summer.  I suggested extending this  further around the village on the local Facebook group and was met with a very enthusiastic response . I felt that if we could form a group in Loddiswell that could work together to enhance the biodiversity of our green spaces, protect the local wildlife  (we are privileged to have a plethora of this, much of it rare and endangered),encourage residents to make their gardens wildlife friendly and improve connectivity (create hedgehog highways etc.,) then collectively we could make an impact..  With other groups like ours springing up across the South Hams a ripple effect would be  created and if this was repeated across the country then we would  stand a real chance of making a difference.  This I felt, would give people hope and motivation.  By working together as a village community to improve connectivity we would also complement the work of the Avon Valley Project and work alongside it.  Lynne Kenderdine has  already given us much valuable advice and support, as well as donating seed collected from meadows within the Avon Valley.

Inspired by a project I saw on the Plantlife website “Restoring Shropshire's Verges” , I contacted Janet Cobb, one of the driving forces behind it and she gave me lots of information and encouragement (and here was a ripple already extending from Shropshire to Devon!)  I  then linked up with other like minded individuals in the village and Wild About Loddiswell was formed.

That was the easy part!  If we were going to apply for any sort of funding, we would need a bank account. Our Parish Council, though supportive were not prepared to take us under their wing so this meant we would have to formalise the group with a committee and a constitution.  Holding an AGM during a pandemic was a challenge, after postponing one date due to lockdown we resorted to holding the meeting on Zoom.  Our biggest challenge at that point was persuading people to join the committee and bigger still to become officers.  We had lots who wished to be part of the email group and to volunteer but anyone prepared to commit beyond that was hard to find.   We managed to assemble a committee of eight and from that elected three officers.  After much online research I had drafted a constitution and this was formally adopted at the AGM.  We chose to be an unincorporated association which seemed to be the simplest and. most appropriate to our group.  Over the following weeks we opened a bank account and took out insurance.

Our first project was to plant some trees on a piece of common ground on the edge of the village, the primary school children were involved with this too as they have their forest school there.  To get the show on the road we decided to hold a launch event with a talk on bats given by Craig Dunton and Lynne Kenderdine from Devon Wildlife Trust spoke about the Avon Valley Project.  I set up a Facebook group, website and  wrote an article in the village magazine encouraging people to come along.  We also invited people to join our email group to receive regular updates.  At this point we also launched our campaign to save the old school field.  This meadow had previously been the playing field for the school and is situated right in the heart of the village.  A new school was built on the new housing estate on the outskirts of the village in 2018 and the field became redundant.  Over the last five years the field has wilded itself beautifully.  The tussocky grass is a valuable habitat for wildlife and hosts a wide diversity of wildflowers.  There is a small copse (planted by village children) and the mixed native hedges around its edge are home to, amongst many other creatures, hazel dormice. Other rare species include slow worms and hedgehogs. A barn owl has been seen hunting there and rare bat species (greater and lesser horseshoe, grey long eared) have been recorded foraging over it.  DCC submitted a planning application for 25 houses, which was fortunately  rejected by SHDC.  Wild About Loddiswell hope the field can be protected and kept as a green space for the village where we could plant a community orchard and create a nature reserve which would provide a quiet place for residents to enjoy and connect with nature.  We conducted a small referendum and the vast majority of responses were in support of our proposals and against housing.  Having just been warned another planning application for ten houses in imminent we will be ramping up our campaign and asking residents to sign petitions shortly.

 

wild flower planting with wild about loddiswell

Liz Montague

Wildflower sowing with Wild about Loddiswell community group. Image by Liz Montague

Funding for start up costs was hard to find and largely came out of our own pockets.  A local business kindly  paid our insurance premium.  Hetty Lewis (Wilder Communities) provided us with some useful advice on funding and we managed to secure some funding for equipment from Wild About Devon.  The Aune Conservation Association sponsored  our BioBlitz and our local district councillor and Loddiswell Parish Council provided the funding for a Gardening for Wildlife Booklet we had printed and distributed to every household in the village.

We are very happy with how the group is going.  The Facebook group currently has 193 members and on it members share their photos of wildlife ,or lovely local views.  It really is a joy and full of positivity.  The email group has just over fifty members.  We try to make our group as accessible as possible to all, hence we have the website, email group and a regular article in the village magazine recognising that not everyone is on Facebook. As well as practical projects we organise group guided visits to local private conservation projects and activities such as bat walks, led by our local expert, Craig Dunton.

Over the course of the year we have also held a BioBlitz and sown wildflower seed on a grassy triangle at edge of the village.

I think the best bits have been seeing the enthusiasm our project has sparked within the village, this was highlighted when we held our BioBlitz.  It was lovely to meet and chat with people in the Church (our base camp) as they brought in their garden wildlife sightings to us, all were eager to share with us what they had seen, often accompanied by photos too.  There was much excitement earlier in the year when red kites were observed over Loddiswell and more recently there has been similar excitement at seeing a barn owl hunting regularly on the edge of the village.  I love seeing these Facebook posts it makes me feel we have already made a difference, if only in heightening people's awareness and appreciation of the wildlife around them as this will make them more inclined to want to protect it.   Hope fully we will soon see more physical evidence of our efforts and an increase in the biodiversity around us.

For me, what really made it feel worthwhile was reading this quote from Fiona Van Es (one of our resident ecologists) in  an article for our local paper: “As we completed our wildflower seeding of a grassy village triangle this Saturday, one of my fellow Loddiswellians rested on his rake, face lit up, and said, “I've wanted to do this ever since we moved here”.  Individually, it had been a dream held by a number of us and now, brought together with that shared vision  we were taking it forward with the blessing of our parish council and a gift of locally harvested seed from Devon Wildlife Trust”

That makes me feel proud.

Written by: Liz Montague

Advice for others:

Don't shy away from social media – Facebook is a great way of communicating, however, recognise that not everyone is on Facebook so also have an email group and website.  Advertise events with posters too and write articles in local magazines.

I used Wix to set up a website.

For advice about setting up a group – aims, objectives, constitution etc., etc..: www.resourcecentre.org.uk

Join TCV – an excellent source of information: www.tcv.org.uk

Devon Wildlife Trust Wilder Communities: excellent source of information and support: hlewis@devonwildlifetrust.org

Sustainable South Hams: www.sustainablesouthhams.org