Somerset Wildlife Trust current and past projects.

We have taken the decision to restrict dogs to being allowed only on public rights of way (the droves) at our Westhay Moor and Catcott nature reserves.

Somerset Wildlife Trust will be carrying out peat restoration work at Westhay Moor National Nature Reserve. The work is being funded by the Nature for Climate Peatland Grant Scheme which is administered by Natural England on behalf of Defra.

Peatlands are an amazing part of our landscapes, not only for the rare and specialised species they support but for the ecosystem services they provide like storing carbon, filtering drinking water, mitigating flood waters etc. Yet 80% of the UK’s peatland are degraded, emitting carbon and threatening the species the support.

Bitterns have been recorded on Somerset Wildlife Trust reserves for the past 10 years, and their numbers have been growing year on year. We're interested in finding out if the bitterns have spread out from the Somerset Levels and Moors, and if so, where they're going! This count is hosted on iNaturalist.

Our ‘Ponds Alive!’ project is an exciting community-led initiative taking place in West Somerset. Coordinated by Somerset Wildlife Trust volunteer Elizabeth Atkinson, it aims to help revitalise, enhance, and increase local freshwater habitats, while also encouraging more people to get involved in citizen science to help us learn more about West Somerset’s ponds and pond life.

Thanks to £94,000 funding from European Marine Fisheries Fund, with support from the Sustainable Eel Group (SEG), we have been working to ensure that incredible eels can continue to find safe refuge in our county’s wetland habitats during their epic journey in the future.

A project supported by the Landscape Recovery scheme - one of the Government's three new Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMS).

Read what the Yorkshire Peat Partnership and Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust are doing to restore peatland in Yorkshire and Wales.

This is a 2-year project to enhance, improve and expand seven wetland habitat sites within and beyond the Avalon Marshes landscape.