The aim of the Sussex Wildlife Trust is to conserve the Sussex landscape, wildlife and its habitats, and to use its knowledge and expertise to help the people of Sussex to enjoy, understand and take action to this end.
We aim to achieve this by carrying out work under the following five broad headings:
- Enhancing the desire in people for a healthy, wildlife rich environment
- Leading the conservation agenda for Sussex
- Biodiversity monitoring and recording
- Promoting achievement of biodiversity targets by others
- Delivering progress towards biodiversity targets ourselves
Enhancing the desire in people for a healthy, wildlife rich environment
Improving the wildlife and wild places of Sussex will only be possible in the long run if people have a desire for wildlife. A very important part of our work is therefore to encourage the enjoyment and understanding of wildlife through life-long learning and promoting active citizenship. We do this by running courses and events, and by interpreting wildlife and wildlife issues to people. We also promote wildlife and environmental issues in local communities through such initiatives as the gardening for wildlife and Urban greenspace projects. Wildlife and environmental issues are also promoted to the general public through our work with the media and through WildCall, our wildlife information service.
Leading the conservation agenda for Sussex
Many different people and organisations are involved in nature conservation. As a small organisation with limited resources perhaps the most effective way to affect change in favour of nature conservation is by leading the agenda with ideas or new approaches. We do this through our input into the Sussex Biodiversity Partnership - ensuring that biodiversity action plans are written and implemented for species and habitats. The next step is to look at a larger scale, landscape approach promoting the "re-naturalisation" of parts of Sussex to the benefit of people and wildlife - re-naturalised river valleys and coastal plains, for example, the expansion of forest and heathland matrixes in the Weald. The work in our nature reserve at Butcherlands and Ebernoe are examples of how we are leading the thinking in this area. Alongside these projects we aim to be the leaders when it comes to environmental education in Sussex, where some of these new or challenging ideas can be put across in key environmental centres throughout Sussex.
Biodiversity monitoring and recording
Biodiversity information is at the heart of nature conservation. The effectiveness of any action is poor if our information base is inadequate. The Biodiversity Record Centre has gone from strength to strength over the last decade and now has very effective projects for identifying and addressing information need. We also aim to foster specialist expertise through our Biological Recorders Seminar and by supporting the publication of material. Work underway includes the improvement of the use of data across the south-east region and the establishment of a survey arm, which co-ordinates large, non-controversial surveys across the county. We are also significantly improving people's access to wildlife information through the BRC web site. Information on Trust Nature Reserves is also now better organised and there is an active monitoring programme.
Promoting achievement of biodiversity targets by others
Nature conservation will never succeed if it is left to nature conservationists! It is vitally important that we influence the decisions and actions of other people. We therefore expend considerable resources influencing the policies of other organisations through, for example by inputting into Local, County, Regional and National Authorities. We can also influence others by using our nature reserves to demonstrate nature conservation, perhaps in partnership with adjacent landowners. In addition much work is done at a national or regional level by other parts of the Wildlife Trust network. It is vital that we support this work as it is unlikely that we will achieve much change locally if we fail to influence regional and national policies. A particular area for regional work is with the marine environment. Here we are using Trust resources to raise awareness about marine issues and by working with fisheries and marine aggregates industries.
Delivering progress towards biodiversity targets ourselves
The most direct way we can achieve nature conservation is through acquiring and looking after nature reserves. We carefully select the land we wish to acquire and implementing sound management plans on all our reserves. Recently, however, we are looking at how our reserves fit into their landscape context and increasingly we will be looking to create partnerships with neighbours in order to achieve conservation over a larger area than that covered by our reserves. This will involve work from our Community project as well as from the People and Wildlife team. We are also implementing wider projects aimed at delivering the conservation management that is needed on our reserves. This includes, for example, a grazing animals project, using our own animals to graze and manage our reserves. We also run an Otters and Rivers Project whose general aim is to enhance wetland habitats throughout Sussex. This is achieving conservation gain by promoting river and wetland enhancements and through the planting of black poplar trees (Sussex's rarest tree).
