Spring was spent assessing rewilded sights and getting some training done. First aid at Folly Farm was rainy, but very valuable! It's been lovely to watch everything come to life across North Somerset and get a first look at the sights we will be surveying.

As the months have gotten warmer, the vegetation has gotten longer, and with it more and more species to survey. Some sites, like Kilkenny Fields in Portishead, have grass at shoulder height in some areas, and the insect numbers on the sweep net surveys are vast. I don’t think I have ever seen so many meadow plant bugs in my life!

The weather has, at times, posed a challenge. Heatwaves tend to cause everyone, insects and humans alike, to seek shelter. Despite the heat in July, however, we have seen many new species on our rewilded sites, some which have yet to be documented there before, like marbled white butterflies.

During the autumn, most of our sites have slowly been winding down in terms of wildlife, and, though it is still there, the maintenance on the sites has meant a lot of the long vegetation has been cut in the yearly management cycle.

However, the year has been spent teaching volunteers to carry on with the monitoring in the spring, and I have no doubt they’ll find even more next year, as the long vegetation in the tree plantations continues to evolve.
I have learned an awful lot about our native species and how to identify them, as well as gaining a lot of experience with volunteers over the past months. It's given me new insight into how rich our wild spaces are, and the steps needed to monitor and maintain them.