Wildlife Trust launches £1million fundraiser to help restore and protect Surrey’s habitats
It comes as it's revealed one-third of Surrey's species, including Hedgehogs, Yellowhammers, Hazel Dormice and Wrynecks are in serious decline or already extinct.
Surrey Wildlife Trust has launched a £1million fundraiser to help restore, connect and protect Surrey’s habitats.
It comes as it's revealed one-third of Surrey's species, including Hedgehogs, Yellowhammers, European Eels, Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers, Harvest Mice, Hazel Dormice and Wrynecks are in serious decline or already extinct.
Greatest Hits Radio spoke to Oliver Fry from Surrey Wildlife Trust:
"Basically, nature's in a lot of trouble, as it is elsewhere. And if if nature's in trouble, that means we're all in trouble.
"We at Surrey Wildlife Trust have a have a plan to do something about that, but we can't achieve all the things we need to achieve in terms of restoring habitats, working to save rare species and helping people live more closely and more responsibly with nature. We need everyone to help us do that.
"And that's why we're asking for £1million to help us really get stuff done for wildlife in Surrey.
"Across Surrey, there are a huge number of different habitats and some of them are very important. We have things like heathland and chalk grassland and we work very hard to conserve those. That could include using our conservation grazing herds to keep scrub in check and to manage those habitats, so they're great for the widest possible array of species. We've got a wetland strategy in the pipeline, which is going to look at how we can campaign really hard to clean up our rivers and our lakes and ponds and streams and how we can work with businesses and farmers to make sure that pollution and other disturbance to habitats is reduced as far as possible.
"We want to work with more schools to get them improving their school grounds for nature. .
"We have lots of information online and elsewhere about how you can work even in your own garden, even if it's a very small garden to make it a more nature friendly space. So there's something that everybody can do.
"In Surrey we have some quite rare species, things like the Yellowhammer and the Nightingale, the Dartford Warbler and the Sand Lizard. All these species need specific plans to help them recover and we work very closely on our reserves to create places where they can survive and thrive."