Wildlife and Conservation Group Minutes: January 2022

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Upper Deverills Wildlife and Conservation Group

Notes From the First Meeting Held on Friday 14 January 2022 at the Bell House

1 Present

REDACTED

2 Formation of the Group

We resolved to form a group with the working title of the Upper Deverills Wildlife and Conservation Group. We will either confirm or change the title as time goes on. We will go public and announce the formation of the group at the Village Hall talk on February 11th

3 Rationale and objects

Parish Plan Questionnaire

The decision to form a group came out of the responses received in the Parish Plan 2022 question. An overwhelming number of people responding to the questionnaire made “Conservation and restoration of the local environment, including its ecology” a high priority to be addressed inthe 2022 Parish Plan”.

Initial objects

We will refine our objectives as the group develops, but in broad terms, we agreed that the Group’s overall ambitions are twofold:

  • To share with each other the joy that we derive from nature, and inspire and inform the wider valley community.
  • To take action to make the Upper Deverills a better place for wildlife.

4 Approach

Longer term

We provisionally agreed that our long term approach would to be to develop and execute a Community Environmental Plan, based on the Wiltshire Council Community Environmental Toolkit, which we will now all have a look at in detail.

Shorter term

In the shorter term we decided to carry out a number of activities in order to develop momentum and attract interested people to join the group:

  • The first Village Hall talk, on Animal Behaviour, to be delivered by Simon and Mandy Martyn on Friday 11 February.
  • A small and straightforward habitat project, such as creating a wildflower meadow in a churchyard. Ted will speak to Robert Shuler to see whether we might do this in St Mary’s churchyard in Kingston Deverill. (Sally grows wild flower seedlings. )
  • A field outing (perhaps a transect or survey), possibly to the chalk grassland of the Brimsdown SSSI on Cold Kitchen Hill, in search of blue butterflies. Peter will discuss this with Richard Joy.
  • Alison will speak to Tracy Adams, the Farm Conservation Advisor on the Cranborne Chase AONB team, to see whether she would be prepared to give a talk.
  • We discussed the possibility of a single species bird survey as a way of public engagement and Alison agreed to think about the choice of species.

5 Next steps

Funding

Ted will explore with Richard Munro the possibility of a grant from the Parish Council

Next meeting

We did not set a date for the next meeting but I suggest that we get as much done as possible by exchange of email and then call another face to face meeting when we need to.

Ted Flint (Chair pro tem)