If you have been out walking on the Bishop’s Meadow recently and have spotted some strange activities going on – don’t worry!
The Bishop’s Meadow Trust is incredibly proud to have been awarded a grant of £9,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund through their Resilient Heritage programme. We applied for this money to help us pay for the cost of carrying out a full range of wildlife surveys on the Meadow. We will be working together with the Surrey Wildlife Trust who will provide the necessary expertise. Over a period of a couple of months we will be finding out what exists on the Meadow in terms of birds, reptiles, moths and butterflies, bats, grasses, plants and small mammals.
There are many reasons for collecting this information. Firstly, knowing what currently lives on the Meadow will help us to develop a new plan for the management of the land over the next 3 – 5 years. We can make sure that our new plan preserves what is already on the Meadow and encourages greater biodiversity in the longer term. Secondly, having this comprehensive information now will allow us to see what changes take place over a period of time so we can see whether our land management strategies are working. It will act as baseline data to monitor what we hope will be positive change.
Experts from Surrey Wildlife Trust have started the survey on plants and grasses. The bird surveys (carried out at 5am!) are complete and the reptile surveys will be continued over the coming month or so. Pictured with this post are some slowworms we found on one of the reptile surveys and Surrey Wildlife Trust expert Jamel Guenioui. We would be really happy to have people come along and join in on our next search for reptiles, so if you are interested please let us know by sending an email to info@bishopsmeadowtrust.org
UPDATE. The Survey has now been completed - see the full list HERE
