The Warrington Nature Conservation Forum (WNCF) met at the Fiddlers Ferry Power Station Educational Resource Centre again this year on Saturday 2nd December. The centre is a great resource centre used by many schools in Warrington and Widnes and they wish to thank Gemma for hosting the event.
Our speaker this year was Jenny Griggs (Community Engagement Officer) of the Lancashire Wildlife Trust (LWT). She gave a brilliant talk on “The Carbon Landscape Project” click on this link http://www.carbonlandscape.org.uk for more details and short video.
Her talk was followed by a lengthy exchange of some very interesting questions with the WNCF members passing on to Jenny a list of partners details and what they could offer.
One of the outcomes for the Carbon Project is to link up the mosses and coalfields of parts of Manchester and Warrington. They will be attempting to map for visitors a wildlife corridor with a marathon 26-mile central spine and involve volunteer groups and individuals over the next 5 years.
The chair pointed out that the WNCF had expressed a view to link up wildlife sites as part of the Warrington Local Plan developing the ideas of Hugh Warwick in his book Linescapes. Jenny said “The LWT have estimated that there are over 100,000 people within 10 minutes walking distance of the Carbon Project or half of Warrington Town’s population.
David Nowell (New Cut Heritage and Ecology Trail) posted later in the day on the WNCF Facebook site “Very interesting meeting. Particularly, Jenny Griggs’ presentation on the Carbon Landscape.” It was Dave’s first WNCF meeting and we hope that he will spread the word and return for our spring meeting, details will appear on our new web site www.WNCF.co.uk where you can join up or ask questions via our contact page and don’t forget out Facebook site “Warrington Nature Conservation Forum” which usually has at least one update per day of interest.
The Treasurer (Brian Martin of Woolston Eyes) and Chair, Geoff Settle reported that two years after Warrington Borough Council divorced itself from the WNCF the Forum had a bit of money in the bank and a developing media base on which to go forward. The treasurer had found a venue for the quarterly WNCF exec meeting in exchange for him doing their gardening.
With a membership of almost 550 LIKES one issue is to translate that into bums on seats at meetings so that more can find out about the great Nature Conservation work going on in the Town by the many wildlife groups can be further highlighted.
In interview on Radio Warrington earlier in the week presenter the Tuesday and Thursday afternoon slots, Steve Lewis made a remarked “people don’t appear to be that interested in Wildlife in Warrington”.
Geoff replied “Well some are very enthusiastic, and they are beavering away quietly in small groups actively trying to conserve what we have. We were set up by WBC following the World Rio Conference in 1990’s to act as a voice for Warrington and shout about Nature conservation and Biological Diversity and get people to learn more through doing stuff.
Hence our 11 pages of evidence to the Local Plan and the Western Link.
It was good to hear from Jenny say, ‘WBC was one of the 22 partners in the Carbon Landscape Project.’
So, maybe we are not shouting and writing in vain, hopefully are views and are being read and considered. We will continue to be a conduit, but people should remember that we are all volunteers with limited resources (time and money) so the more people that we can get involved the better chance we can have of raising awareness along with our partners.”
Geoff Settle
Chair Nature Conservation Forum