In September the Velox team met up in person for the first time since March for a day of conservation work at the London Wetlands Centre. After 6 months of seeing each other only via video conference it was the perfect opportunity to catch up away from our screens and surrounded by nature.
The Wetlands Centre is run by one of the largest and most respected conservation charities in the world, the WWT (Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust), who work globally to save, restore and create wetlands for wildlife and people. They help save endangered species from extinction, including some of the rarest birds in the world. We were delighted to spend a day at their London reserve getting involved and learning more about their pioneering conservation work and globally important wetland reserves.
We spent the day armed with saws and loppers destroying and clearing an area of dense woodland. This may seem counter intuitive given all that we know about the detrimental damage that deforestation is causing worldwide, however we were happy to have been assigned this task for the purpose of boosting biodiversity as we are also acutely aware of the devastating impact that biodiversity loss is having on our planet.
Some photos of the team hard at work
Opening up this specific area of woodland was an essential part of maintaining the diverse set of habitats they have created. In order to develop biodiversity at the reserve it’s necessary to stop certain species from becoming dominant, and for this it is important to have woodland and hedgerow at different stages of maturity. The work we did was in order to create a mosaic of contrasting habitats to appeal to different species at different times of the year, and that area will now allow more light in during spring time next year in order for wildflowers and insects to flourish.
This certainly gave an insight in to the vast amount of planning and care that goes in to running this site, and that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to maintaining and conserving wildlife and the environment.
We thoroughly enjoyed our day of conservation work and appreciate the significance of a healthy wetland in the heart of London, so much so that we plan to make it a regular feature of our volunteering programme.
The London Wetlands Centre is dependent on a thriving volunteer programme, which like many things has been negatively impacted by COVID-19 restrictions this year. If you or your firm would like to volunteer please get in contact with corporate-enquiries@wwt.org.uk.