Wilder Waters Appeal
Jon Hawkins - Surrey Hills Photography
Protecting our amphibians
Rural Warwickshire once had a mosaic of ponds, but over time, wet areas were drained to improve land for food production, and water troughs replaced the need for farmland ponds.
Pond creation and restoration can provide new homes for frogs, toads and other wildlife. Our mapping data give us an understanding of where former ponds could be brought back to life with funding from the Wilder Waters Appeal.
Don Sutherland
Homes for wading birds
Wading birds like curlews and lapwing are declining as their wet grassland homes have been drained and over-developed. Climate change has led to deadly flooding, and low insect populations leaves chicks with less food.
Funding could support our teams in restoring floodplain meadows and creating wet grasslands near rivers, creating safer spaces for wading birds to live.
Linda Pitkin/2020VISION
Wilding our riverbanks
Ploughed fields, manicured lawns or concrete surfaces often extend to the top of riverbanks, leaving them bare of wild plants and trees.
Funding could help our teams plant up wilder riverbanks, sow wildflower meadows, and create refuge pools by waterways, helping to stop pollution and creating more space for wetland wildlife like kingfishers.
WKWT
Surveying our rivers
Funding could support our teams to assess where rivers need help, evaluate the possibility of species reintroductions and design projects to deliver positive impacts for wildlife.
Communities care deeply about their local rivers and want to help them. Funding could support citizen science programmes so people can monitor local rivers, record wildlife living there and report pollution.
Jacob Loughran
Natural climate solutions
Our rivers should be bendy and clean – how wildlife likes them. We’re already working on rivers across the county, but there’s so much more we can do.
By re-wiggling rivers, planting trees and creating natural features, we can make them more resilient. Slowing the flow of water during flooding, holding more water in times of drought and improving quality by filtering out pollution.
Trout fry by Linda Pitkin
£5,000
£10,000
£50,000
Kingfisher by Dan Hewitt
