Press Releases 

Somerset Wildlife Trust are delighted to announce that, together with the Blackdown Hills Trust, it has received funding of over £20,000 from Viridor Credits , through the Landfill Communities Fund, to support its work in the Blackdown Hills to reverse the decline of four key butterfly species. 

Somerset Wildlife Trust, a key partner in the Hills to Levels project arranged a visit ,supported by Natural England,  for a  group of agricultural students and their lecturers from Bridgwater and Taunton College’s Cannington Centre to explore Southlake Moor and Burrow Mump. 

Somerset Wildlife Trust is excited to announce the release of its  latest Knit for Nature™ pattern – Boris the Barn Owl –  as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the decline of much-loved Somerset species and get communities inspired to pick up their knitting needles to raise much needed funds for wildlife conservation in the county.

Somerset Wildlife Trust is incredibly proud to announce that its volunteer Coastal Ambassador,  Nigel Phillips, has been awarded the Marsh Christian Trust’s ‘Marsh Volunteer Award’. The Award was given in recognition of outstanding contributions to marine conservation by a Wildlife Trust volunteer,  and was presented to Nigel at Somerset wildlife Trust’s first ever Coastal Conference.

Somerset Wildlife Trust’s Green Down Nature Reserve, near Somerton, supports one of the largest populations of the Large Blue butterfly in Europe.  That is why Wessex Water’s Senior Ecologist Mark Doughty visited the Reserve with a £500 Wessex Watermark Award on Wednesday 12^th October.

 As a special fundraiser and to celebrate the launch of its new Knit For Nature™ knitting pattern, Boris The Barn Owl, Somerset Wildlife Trust have teamed up with Miles Tea and Coffee and West Somerset Railway and is proud to present a ‘Steam Tea Wildlife Special’ train ride on Thursday 27^th October. 

This year we are delighted to welcome wildlife presenter, Mike Dilger, from the BBC’s ‘The One Show’.  Mike will be giving an interactive and illustrated talk this November, entitled ‘The Trials & Tribulations of a Wildlife Presenter’, which will take us through some of his favourite wildlife filming experiences from around the world, punctuated with some wonderful and amusing ancedotes.

Viridor has renewed its partnership with the Somerset Wildlife Trust to support their urban wildlife project, The Routes to the River Tone, to bring people closer to wildlife in Taunton.

It’s not too late to save UK nature but we must act now to put nature back where it belongs - that is the conclusion from a coalition of more than 50 leading wildlife and research organisations behind the State of Nature 2016 report , including the Wildlife trusts, which is being launched by Sir David Attenborough at the Royal Society in London today.

The once-extinct large blue butterfly, reintroduced to the UK in 1984, flew in its highest numbers for at least 80 years this summer, due to the combined efforts of the Large Blue Project, Somerset Wildlife Trust, Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust and their project partners, belying widely-reported warnings that 2016 could be the worst year on record for British butterflies.