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CONFERENCE TO LAUNCH RARE GRASSLAND PROJECT Ref 23/6/2008
A conference to be held this week will launch an ambitious new five year landscape scale project which aims to save the remaining Culm Grassland of North and West Devon. The conference will be held on 27 June at the Fox and Hounds Hotel, Eggesford. It will bring together over 80 delegates who have an interest in saving this unique wet grassland habitat. The conference is a chance for them to learn more about DWT's detailed plans for the next five years. Key speakers on the day will be Dr John Hopkins, a grassland specialist for the Nature Conservancy Council, Dr Mike Moser who is a wetlands specialist and has been Deputy Chair of English Nature since May 2004 along with Professor Michael Winter who is an expert on rural politics & economics and is Director of the Centre for Rural Research at the University of Exeter. Devon Wildlife Trust's (DWT) Working Wetlands project will be the charity's biggest project to date. The project aims to recreate large areas of this rare habitat. 92% has been lost since the beginning of the 20th Century, mainly through agricultural improvement.The project aims to secure over 2000 hectares of Culm grassland in good condition by 2013 within three priority areas, Upper Tamar/Torridge Headwaters, Hollow & Odham Moors and Rackenford & Knowstone Moors. Working Wetlands will also reconnect important wildlife areas by restoring associated key habitats that provide essential links to the Culm sites. The project includes a team of five advisors that will be out on the ground talking to landowners and providing grants to help support the management of priority habitats. The project will be managed by DWT's Peter Burgess, he said: "This conference is our chance to let as many interested parties know about our big plans for the next five years. DWT has been building up to this project for a couple of decades now, learning about how best to managed Culm Grassland and the challenges that face landowners. This landscape scale project brings together everything we have learned but moves it on to a much larger scale. In order to rebuild our biodiversity for the future we must work on a landscape scale, not just in small fragmented sites. If we don't start arresting the decline of these sites, our life giving ecosystems will cease to function especially with the onset of climate change." Devon holds over 80% of the remaining Culm left in England. Culm Grassland is an important habitat for breeding curlew, the European threatened marsh fritillary butterfly, narrow bordered bee-hawk moth and many rare wild flowers. The project has been supported by the Tubney Charitable Trust, South West Water, Devon Waste Management, Grantscape and Natural England.
For more information about the conference and how to get involved in the project, call 01409 221823

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UNRAVELLING MYSTERIES OF THE HARBOUR PORPOISE IN NORTH DEVON Ref/2 June 2008
Tomorrow (Friday 13th June), Devon Wildlife Trust begins its search for the elusive harbour porpoise in the waters off Ilfracombe, North Devon. This marks Devon Wildlife Trust's involvement in cutting-edge research from the University of Exeter in collaboration with Natural England to investigate the underwater life of porpoise along the North Devon coastline. It is hoped that the findings will help conserve this elusive marine mammal in future. Devon Wildlife Trust will use two Timing-Porpoise detectors T-PODs) to listen for porpoise activity. A T-POD is a device used to log the presence of porpoises that emit echolocation clicks within its vicinity. T-PODs work by continuously scanning the frequencies over which porpoise emit their echolocation clicks. These clicks are used for communication and finding prey. Whenever a porpoise moves through the area close to the T-PODs the clicks are logged and are downloaded to a computer to see how long porpoise have spent in a particular area. Alex McDonald, project leader and University of Exeter MSC student says: 'This is an exciting opportunity to determine what brings porpoise to the area and hopefully predict similar places where we would expect to find porpoise along the Devon coastline. We need to find out what makes this area important to porpoises? How does the seabed or local characteristics of the area determine that porpoise will be found in a particular site? The findings will be valuable to future conservation efforts.' Little is known about the harbour porpoise's daily life as they are hard to spot on the surface. In recent years the harbour porpoise has seen widespread population declines throughout its range attributed to factors including fishing activity, exposure to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and habitat degradation. In order to adequately conserve the harbour porpoise, more information is needed about why porpoise are found in particular areas and not others. Alex McDonald adds: 'Continued effort from volunteers in the Cetacean Recording Network (CRN) has produced long-term data on porpoise presence in an area. This information could be greatly enhanced by using a T-POD to gather continuous data on porpoise presence in the Ilfracombe area. We hope this project will help unravel some of the mysteries of this amazing creature.' For more information about the Cetacean Recording Network visit www.devonwildlifetrust.org

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CORPORATE CONSERVATION TO HELP PROTECT RARE SPECIES Ref 30 May 2008
The Devon Wildlife Trust has received a grant from the Dartmoor National Park Authority's Dartmoor Sustainable Development Fund to help support vital conservation work on five of the charity's nature reserves. The grant of £6,155 will fund a programme of 12 corporate volunteering events on five of DWT's nature reserves based within Dartmoor National Park including Emsworthy, Blackadon, Mill Bottom, Lower East Loundson and the popular Dunsford nature reserve. The work will benefit species such the rare high brown fritillary butterfly which enjoys the sunny slopes within the sessile oak woodland at Blackadon. The species has been suffering due to the increase of bracken that has been shading out the violets which the insect feeds on. Other species which will benefit include the threatened marsh fritillary, dormouse, pied flycatcher and blackcap.The corporate volunteers will be helping with scrub clearance, cutting and raking bracken and coppicing at the sites, all tasks which are labour intensive and time consuming for reserve officers to carry out by themselves. DWT's corporate relations officer has been pioneering corporate volunteering over the past 5 years through a programme of work with nearly 100 different corporate supporters including EDF Energy, Bardon Aggregates and the Met Office. Tracy Ebbrell DWT's Corporate Relations Officer said: "We are committed to getting more people out on our nature reserves and to getting businesses to increase their accountability. As part of our growing Corporate Supporter Scheme, we are now running a Corporate Volunteering Project which helps us deliver labour intensive habitat management work on our nature reserves and gets local businesses involved in wildlife conservation. This grant will help with the costs of staff time, transport, tools and materials for the tasks and will be invaluable." Holly Tiffen, Sustainable Development Officer at Dartmoor National Park Authority said: "The Dartmoor Sustainable Development Fund has been set up to encourage innovative sustainable development projects that help improve the quality of life of communities on Dartmoor, both now and in the future." For more information about DWT's corporate work visit: www.devonwildlifetrust.org

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