July 2024 Newsletter
It’s been another busy month for summer events, including Sherfest, Old Down Bioblitz and the Hatch Warren Festival. If any groups would like Natural Basingstoke’s support for local events in the future, please let me know – they are a great way to both recruit volunteers and encourage communities to support local biodiversity. We are now getting to the end of the season with only a couple of events remaining and (hopefully) time to draw breath before the winter work party season starts.
Next month (August) is the start of the mowing season. Following last years’ challenges with completing the mowing schedule on time, the Rangers have produced a plan with the aim of ensuring all meadow mowing can be completed within a three-month window. Further information on this is attached for those of you that manage meadowland sites.
It was great to meet many of you at the Volunteer Thankyou Event this month, I hope you all enjoyed yourselves and gained some benefit from talking to other groups. By popular request, I marked the quiz after the event and the joint winners were Oakley Woodlands and Hatch Warren! ☺
One thing that I did learn over the summer is that there are various keen individuals who are linked to one group but would like to work on other sites or help with events. In the autumn I plan to start a new mailing list for people in this category, if any of your group members are interested in joining, please ask them to contact me on the email address below.
This month we have a contribution from Old Down and information about South-East Rivers Trust. If you’d like to include something in a future newsletter, please contact me via the email address below.
Best wishes
Gill
Latest News
NB Groups/ Our ‘Green’ Partners
NB Groups
Old Down (Jenny Levy)
Old Down is a beautiful chalk downland site, the main part of which is a spectacular native wildflower meadow. In July the group took part in a public ‘Bioblitz’ event on site, this was intended to record as many species as possible found on the site that day, and to encourage local interest in the nature on site. The night before we put out a moth trap and had various interesting species found in the trap on display, together with static displays on moths, mammals, birds and wildflowers, and some family friendly competitions. The weather was sadly not on our side this time (an unexpected thunderstorm blew in). If anyone would like to join one of our work parties, please do get in touch with us via email: odandbwd@gmail.com. We are particularly interested to hear from anyone across the various NB groups who would be interested in running Saturday Work Parties as part of our group.
3rd Party News
South-East Rivers Trust
Chalk streams are a rare and valuable habitat, over 85% of which are located in the UK. We are very lucky to have several in the borough, notably the rivers Loddon and Test. This unique habitat is under threat from multiple sources, including, pollution, development, and low flow due to factors such as excessive water abstraction.
In our local area, South-East Rivers Trust (SERT) aims to protect, promote, and enhance these rivers. Loddon Rivers Week takes place from 16th – 24th September, NB is currently working with them on events at some of our sites and also hoping to support them with some citizen science activity, monitoring water quality and recording river flies (a key indicator of environmental health). For more information about SERT, please see: https://www.southeastriverstrust.org/.
Voice for Nature
The Local Plan, Local Nature Recovery Strategy & Planning
It’s been another quiet month from the planning perspective as we still await completion of the drafts for the Local Plan and Local Nature Recovery Strategy by BDBC and Hants County Council.
The proposal for a service station at Junction 6 of the M3 (immediately adjacent to Black Dam Ponds) has reared its ugly head again and a further objection has been submitted. There is a significant risk that water running off the site will pollute the springs feeding the river Loddon and lead to further damage to habitats downstream.
Nature Notes
Moths
Apparently, this month has not been as good as usual for moths, as well as the impact of climate change, their activity is likely to have reduced due to the level of rain this year. Despite this, there have been some wonderful pictures of local finds on social media recently, which caused me to reflect on the beauty and importance of this sometimes underappreciated group.
Some fascinating facts…. Moths taste with their feet, sampling everything they land on. They use their antennae for smell – a male moth can detect a female from more than 7 miles away. It is very hard to imagine their way of experiencing the world* as it is clearly very different from our own. There are 160,000 moth species around the world compared with 17,500 species of butterflies.
[* I am currently reading a book about ‘umwelt’ – how individual organisms experience the world. This is an intriguing topic which reinforces the value of nature by revealing how different other organisms experience is from our own].
Buff Arches Elephant Hawk Moth Small Emerald Herald
Training Courses/ Events
Training/ Events – Dates for your diary
- July – September– Weekly seed harvesting (Old Down, Down Grange, Crabtree) [Those of you who have expressed as interest have been added to a WhatsApp group for seed collecting]
- August (date TBC) – Seed collecting, processing, and storage training
- 4th September – Presentation on ‘No dig gardening’ (Beggarwood)
- 14th September – “Introduction to invertebrates” training (a repeat of this popular course)
Reminders…..
NB Website
As always, latest information can be found on the Natural Basingstoke website: https://naturalbasingstoke.org.uk/ .