Wherever you are in Britain, you are unlikely to live far from a nature reserve.
These vary dramatically in scale and ambition, from tiny local reserves on the outskirts of towns and villages through to major sites of global significance. The creation of reserves has been the backbone of conservation work in the UK for many decades, and together they form a precious patchwork of protected sites across an increasingly nature-depleted country.
Warwickshire Wildlife Trust (WWT) manages more than 65 reserves, several of which form part of my regular patch - Leam Valley, Ufton Fields and Whitnash Brook. But a few days of fine and dry (although far from warm) weather at the
tail end of April gave me a chance to explore a few of those reserves
which I'd not yet visited, despite their being within a few miles of home.
Bishops Hill is one of Warwickshire Wildlife Trust's newest reserves, acquired in 2018. At 16 hectares it was ideal for a late afternoon walk in the sun.
The signature habitat is the hill itself, an expanse of unimproved grassland already bursting with early season wildflowers but soon to erupt full of life with butterflies and other invertebrates (a passing Orange Tip was a hint of what is to come).
But beyond the hill is also a fabulous mosaic of scrub and mature woodland, plus the mysterious and beautiful Blue Pool. Even at this time of the afternoon there were plenty of birds around, most notably a good number of Willow Warbler which we heard as we toured the site.
The next trip was to a trio of sites which have in recent years extended the already magnificent Brandon Marsh nature reserve, the jewel in Warwickshire Wildlife Trust's crown on the outskirts of Coventry.
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| The ancient woodand of Piles Coppice |
Claybrookes Marsh is a great example of a post industrial site turned good, having for most of the 20th century been the railhead for Binley Colliery. Once it fell into disuse and started to return to its natural marsh and grasslands, the discovery of 49 species of nationally and regionally scarce insect species saved it from redevelopment and secured its designation as an SSSI. Now it sits squeezed between a housing estate and the busy A45 as the unlikely home of a remakable diversity of wildflowers, amphibians and insects (including up to a dozen different dragonfly species in the summer).
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| There's nothing quite like a spring carpet of bluebells |
These special places are just a few of the many sites already protected and managed for nature by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust. Excitingly, having acquired and protected more than 65 such sites across Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull over the last 50 years, the trust is now moving into a new phase in its work.
This new strategy will see it acquring and managing places which aren't necessarily special for nature yet, but have the potential to become special. Habitat creation offers the chance to not just manage the decline in nature in Warwickshire but reverse it, with huge benefits not just for nature and the environment but also the well-being of all of us who live here.
The potential to grow these fragmented jewels into larger reserves, with sufficient scale and connectivity to make a real impact on Warwickshire's natural environment and biodiversity, underlines once again why it has always been so important to me to be a supporter, a member and now a volunteer with the trust.
Warwickshire Wildlife Trust's Nature Recovery Fund appeal is aiming to raise £3m towards this ambitious and exciting programme of land acquistion and habitat creation. You can find details at www.warwickshirewildlifetrust.org.uk/appeal and I have no hesitation in encouraging anyone with a love of Warwickshire's natural environment to consider giving something towards this vision of what this fabulous county of ours could become in the not-so-distant future.
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