Innovative mammal conservation

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The return of pine martens

It is more than five years since I drove from Scotland to a vast expanse of woodland in mid-Wales with a precious cargo of four pine martens − of varying temperaments! Feeding blueberries to a pine marten in the car park of a service station on the M6 is something I will always remember. This Read More

12th April 2021

A new way to volunteer at VWT’s bat reserves

In recent years, volunteers have played a vital and ever-increasing role in Vincent Wildlife Trust’s mammal conservation efforts. When it comes to our pine marten projects, volunteers have contributed thousands of hours of their time: walking forest tracks looking for evidence of marten presence in the form of scats; maintaining camera traps and trawling through Read More

15th March 2021

Volunteering in the time of COVID

Last year, 2020, started off like any other year but all outdoor work suddenly ceased in mid-March when COVID-19 restrictions were enforced and lockdown began. All planned work for the spring months had to be cancelled and my highly anticipated season of field work was in fact spent indoors working on spreadsheets. Although these jobs Read More

24th February 2021

Leaving VWT – thoughts of a Trustee

Sally Ford-Hutchinson shares her thoughts about her time as the Vice Chair of VWT’s Board of Trustees. During my career in advertising and market research, I have always been involved in voluntary work for the professional organisations; it was always about giving back. I arrived at a point in my life when I thought I Read More

10th February 2021

My time with Vincent Wildlife Trust as a Trustee

Matt Norman reflects on his time as a Trustee with VWT. In 2010 I spotted an advert online placed by a charity seeking a new Trustee with investment experience. There soon followed a cup of coffee with the CEO and Chairman, a meeting with the remaining Trustees to see if there was a fit…and before Read More

26th January 2021

A privileged peek into the hidden world of greater horseshoe bats

It’s 3am on a Monday morning in June 2019 and I’m perched on a box in the cold dark of a small room, grateful for the many items of branded clothing I’d been issued with when I joined Vincent Wildlife Trust (VWT). I’m wearing them all now…and still I’m cold. I’m also struggling to keep Read More

24th October 2020

Back on the trail of pine martens in northern England

Thanks to funding from the National Lottery, VWT’s Back from the Brink (BftB) Pine Marten Project is facilitating and monitoring the natural recovery of the pine marten as it moves over the border from Scotland into northern England. Working with volunteers, landowners and land managers, we are surveying woodlands in Northumberland and Cumbria to collect Read More

19th August 2020

VWT and the Irish Environmental Network

VWT in Ireland undertakes what you might call a soul-searching exercise in the first quarter of every year. This has nothing to do with setting New Year’s resolutions but relates to our completing an annual application form to join the Irish Environmental Network (IEN). The IEN is an umbrella network that supports Irish environmental NGOs Read More

27th July 2020

The impact of traffic noise on bat activity

We are well aware that driving our cars around, perhaps in pre-Covid-19 times, can have negative effects on the environment by increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, reducing air quality, and increasing the likelihood of pollution in waterways; all of which can have significant effects on human health, but what about impacts Read More

14th July 2020

The ‘bear’ necessities: collating and using evidence in mammal conservation

As conservationists, we often have to make important decisions in our work about what management actions to undertake – from putting up nest boxes to total habitat restoration. To do this correctly, we need to gather a wealth of information such as local site conditions, resource and policy constraints, and any past experience. We also Read More

29th June 2020
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