Author: newtcharity

January Work Party, Saturday 25th… We are going to run a volunteer work party on Saturday January 25th. This will be to cut a path through the southern meadow down to the lakes and then back across Moor lane back through the eastern meadow to link up to our existing paths. That then makes a […]

I thought it would be a nice idea to revisit some of our earlier projects and give an update on their progress. Very early on in NEWT’s existence, about 4 years ago, we did two hedge laying projects. At that time we had been on a coppicing and hedge-laying course and had started replacing our […]

Newbury & Thatcham Green Gym are a fantastic organisation with a great back story for the Green Gym movement as a whole. They do conservation work every Monday morning in nature reserves and public wildlife places in the local area. They are a lovely bunch of people and very enthusiastic hard workers. They came down […]

As we have done tree work we have generated a lot of scrub and brush wood. We left it in piles to rot down and become a home for whatever might want to live there. Insects, Small Mammals, Amphibians and Reptiles all enjoy a good pile of sticks! We are delighted to welcome our first […]

You often hear about traditional hedgelaying in conservation projects involved with landscape regeneration, such as NEWT. Which may seem strange to make manmade features into the land for the restoration of nature. Farmers of yesteryear certainly didn’t pay labourers to lay hedges up and down the country for the benefit of the birds either. It […]

We have three separate meadows that are all quite different. We need to formulate our approach to management and it is clear the strategies for each one will vary somewhat by its unique characteristics. Traditionally they would have been maintained as water meadows for growing hay for animal feed, but this practice has long passed […]

This isn’t the ideal time of year to be doing treework, ideally I would do this in winter as there is less vegetation so less effort clearing your working space, the trees have less sap which is stored in their roots over winter and no leaves so are lighter, thus less dangerous and easier to […]

I believe to improve something, you must be able to measure it in some way. Surveys of nature are inherently time consuming and suffer from huge statistical variations. For example try and count how many bees are in a 1 metre patch in a minute and you will hit a multitude of problems. For a […]

I very pleased that we have successfully navigated the charity application process and are now a Registered Charity Number 1189097 NEWBURY ENVIRONMENT AND WILDLIFE TEAM. Thank you to people who contributed towards this. There is still much to do on the setup side, such as bank account, insurance, etc. But getting the registration was the prerequisite for […]