Ocean Rescue Champions

It’s been a busy month with lots of young people getting in the water to snorkel with us at North Wales Wildlife Trust! Môn Gwyrdd youth forum had a day out at Rhoscolyn, identifying rockpool finds as well as snorkelling face-to-face with shore crabs and edible crabs, they even found a strand of seagrass growing too. The Ocean Rescue Champions had a one-night camp, also at Rhoscolyn, where they learned about seagrass and developed their snorkel skills, and we took our 12 trainees down to Porthdinllaen to learn about all things marine – seagrass, rocky shore ID, strandlining and the importance of Marine Protected Areas.

Meeting a Local MP

Earlier this month, members of the Living Seas Youth Forum met with Ceredigion MP Ben Lake to film an interview for the forums very own climate change themed documentary! As part of the project members of the Forum are developing, scripting, filming and editing their very own climate change themed documentary. The documentary focuses on what they can do to tackle climate change and will include a section on “using your voice” so what better way to demonstrate this than using your voice than talking to your MP?

Our youth forum members Eden and Mattie sat down to grill Ben with questions such as “What do you love about Nature in Ceredigion?” and “What do you think is the most important action we can all take to help slow down climate change?”.

Mattie Jones aged 12 has been a member of the youth forum since it was established. He said, “I liked talking to Ben about the wildlife that he likes in Ceredigion and what he can do as an MP to help our local wildlife and fight climate change.”

The team would like to thank Ben for coming along and having such an open and honest discussion with the forum members as well as Justyn Jones from Small World TV who supported the filming of the interview.

Exciting sessions

The team have been busy hosting sessions in Llanidloes and Trallwng, where theyhave run a bioblitz of the local woods, spotted Wildlife along Montgomery Canal, and ran and a tidy-up prep day for a joint Youth Camp with Radnorshire WT. Everyone is looking forward to the Youth Camp which starts next week. 

A Royal Welsh Show to remember

Staff from Stand for Nature Wales and the Trusts in Cymru and further have been busy running an exciting Royal Welsh event this year in Llanfair-ym-Muallt. with 11 talks covering topics from species re-introduction through to a youth perspective on the future of farming. With so much fantastic content coming from the show, Wildlife Trusts Wales have pulled together a news article about the show and all the presentations that you can read below. 

Read about the show

The Stand for Nature Cardiff forum has been focusing on the lead-up to the National campaign launch this July. The National campaign planning group decided to focus on a pesticide-free campaign, where the hope is to get members of the public to pledge to go pesticide free, and to also ask the government to increase their commitment of pesticide reduction from 50% to 80% by 2030. This included an online meeting of the national campaign group earlier this month, followed by a panel discussion hosted by Stand for Nature about pesticides during the Royal Welsh show. The panel was a great success, with author and social media gardening-guru Huw Richards joining the guests from the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales. The national campaign launch will hopefully spearhead some local campaign action in Cardiff, andthe forum will be meeting next month to discuss potential actions in the city.

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