This week has been all about celebrating our wonderful volunteers, without whom we simply wouldn’t be able to do what we do. We are extremely grateful for the time and expertise they share with us in a variety of roles, whether that’s working with children and families to inspire a life-long love of nature, repairing fences and pulling up invasive plants on our nature reserves, advising individuals on how to garden for wildlife or working with our comms team in the office.

In 2024 alone, our volunteers contributed an incredible 13,235 hours, which equates to £196,270 in paid time. These figures highlight just how important volunteer support is for us, and this week we wanted to shine the spotlight on a few of the volunteer roles that currently support our work.

Wildlife Watch

Wildlife Watch volunteers lead our Watch groups, which are a space where children can meet and enjoy exploring their environment. Going regularly to a group enables young people to have lots of fun and make new friends, whilst they develop a real connection to the natural environment. The activities can include anything from environmental artwork to barn owl surveys to pond dipping!

Scott set up a Wildlife Watch group in Spaxton, on the Quantocks, earlier this year:

“We started Spaxton Wildlife Watch in February 2025, after noticing a lack of nature-based clubs for children in the local area. In our first two sessions we have made animal badges, run wildlife ID sessions, nature themed colouring in and a farm/field safari walk looking for wildflowers.

"Across the two sessions we have had 50 attendees which most children being regular members. The children love getting together and seeing what we can find together, and they are always looking forwards to what we do next.”

Honeygar Rangers

Honeygar Rangers continue to be a vital part of telling Somerset’s story, as we evidence how our wilding approach is stabilising and protecting our precious peat, whilst facilitating nature recovery at Honeygar.

Over the last year the Rangers have been hard at work continuing their monitoring of our dipwell network to show changes in hydrology, monitoring harvest mouse numbers on site, managing our wilder sensing network and surveying for birds, dragonflies, bumblebees, in addition to tracking changes in species through our camera trap project.

Remote and Hybrid Roles

Our small team of desk-based volunteers continue to support us from home or come and join our staff in the office, helping with tasks such as creating content for our website, responding to planning applications and championing space for nature and proofreading newsletters that go out to our supporters.

Tasks like these may not be considered as exciting as being out on one of our nature reserves, BUT they are equally as important. Without volunteers who share their expertise and support us with these administrative tasks we wouldn’t be able to do what we do, so we are extremely grateful!

Wilder Youth

The Wilder Youth Forum which launched in March 2024, members support the Trust in a number of ways. Members have supported running stands at events, they have run workshops on youth action for the Trust's supporters, helped on species surveys and were instrumental in the Trust's 2024 General Election effort.  

They meet up every other month in different locations around Somerset to share opportunities, plan the Trust's youth offer and get involved in practical conservation. This year the forum has had workshops on pine marten ecology and creative campaigning and had a tour of Somerset rewilding site Heal. They also have lots coming up: we are moth trapping in August and have a big marine science meet-up in October.  

Practical Conservation Volunteers

Our practical conservation volunteers support our Reserves Team come rain or shine! South Somerset Reserves Manager Mark Green gives us an insight into the East Poldens group:

“Our East Poldens Conservation Volunteers meet most Tuesdays to help us deliver practical habitat and infrastructure management work on our South Somerset nature reserves. The work varies by season and recently we've been repairing or replacing stock fences, gates, footpaths, steps and signage. Mid-summer we'll switch to pulling or cutting invasive native and non-native plants on our grassland and fen reserves, in the autumn we focus on cutting rides and glades in our woodlands and winter is when we do our trees work, cutting scrub on the grasslands and coppicing in the woodlands.

"The group currently has about 20 members with usually about 10 attending any one session. They're a hardy bunch, working hard in all weathers on some challenging terrain, fuelled by biscuits and tea, freshly brewed with hot water from our Kelly kettle during our two breaks. We all enjoy contributing to the maintenance of our nature reserves, doing physical activity and some beautiful locations and socialising with others who are passionate about nature. The group contributes about 2000 hours of work a year to keeping our nature reserves in good condition for wildlife and people and their help is invaluable.”

Wilder Events Champions

Last but not least, Elizabeth Atkinson who volunteers as a Wilder Events Champion, has been overseeing the West Somerset Wildways community wildlife project for the Trust since 2023, inspiring people to engage with and record wildlife. This year Elizabeth created and is coordinating our new Ponds Alive! project, which aims to help revitalise, enhance, and increase local freshwater habitats, while also encouraging more people to get involved by creating ponds and sharing their finds through citizen science to help us learn more about West Somerset’s ponds and pond life.

We are so grateful for each and every one of our volunteers, and we hope you’ll join us in saying a huge thank you for all their support this year and every year!