Chris Keeling SBG Projects Officer
The Green Light Trust is an established and successful environmental education charity which uses the Power of Nature to transform lives. Since its formation in 1989, the Trust has helped thousands of people, both children and adults, from diverse and challenged backgrounds by using nature to build health and hope with conservation projects at locations around East Anglia.
Green Light Trust volunteers are clearing gorse scrub on Rushmere Common, but the days of ‘scrub bashing’ belong in the past. Scrub is an important wildlife habitat and if managed properly can form a living fence around more vulnerable habitats, creating safe, sheltered areas for butterflies and reptiles. The Green Light Trust are keen to undertake scrub management in a way that creates a mosaic of heather and acid grassland, opening clearings in the gorse scrub rather than wholesale scrub clearance. But we need to undertake baseline surveys to record and monitor species across the site and identify which areas can be opened up or cut back while monitoring and recording changes as the work progresses.
The call for volunteer surveyors first went out in 2020 but as we all know the COVID restrictions made getting out and about and joining projects a real challenge for many of us. We are still looking for volunteers for Spring 2022 but please note the contact details for the Green Light Trust have changed so if you have already tried to contact the Trust and haven’t heard back please don’t be discouraged and please try again.
Please note that contact details have changed
If you can help with bird surveys, butterfly transects or moth trapping evenings, please e-mail Peter Foster at the Green Light Trust at peter@greenlighttrust.org and/or Dave Pearsons representing the Suffolk Bird Group at davepearsons204@btinternet.com.
The COVID pandemic has highlighted the vulnerability of all of us to mental health issues and the importance of nature in healing and restoring our sense of wellbeing. This is an opportunity for SBG members to help people of all ages and backgrounds to engage with nature while helping to restore and enhance wildlife habitats around Ipswich. We really hope you can spare the time to help the Green Light Trust to restore the link between people and nature, while helping to restore a link in our fractured heathland habitats. We look forward to hearing from you.
As SBG projects officer I have agreed to act as liaison between the SBG and the Rushmere Heath Project. Please can I ask that you copy me in when contacting Jack or Dave Persons so that we can coordinate surveys and survey data to ensure that management including scrub clearance is targeted appropriately and SBRC records are updated.
Chris Keeling
Project Officer
Suffolk Bird Group