Alton Water Volunteers
are a diverse group of young and old united by a desire to improve
the wildlife value of Alton Water. There is usually a strong
practical element to our work but opportunities exist for a
wide range of involvement including monitoring, surveying, construction
projects and data collection and handling. Individual skills
and experiences provide a huge pool of talent that can be drawn
upon whenever the need arises. The only stipulation is that
all health and safety aspects are given the highest level of
importance.
To
this end opportunities exist for training courses. In the past
volunteers have undertaken training in mink control, butterfly
monitoring, small mammal trapping, water vole surveying and
bat detection.
The involvement of the group enables a range of tasks to be
completed that wouldn’t otherwise be possible but are
no less important. Hedge management involving removal of growing
tubes once the hedge has been established and the collection
of hedge clippings adjacent to the cycle track are two examples
of this type of work.
The group bond
is held firmly together by the liberal supply of coffee and
doughnuts! Once a year there is normally a ‘day out’,
last year we went to the British Bird Fair’, and an annual
walk around Alton between Christmas and New Year finishes with
a free buffet at the local pub.
But you don’t have to be a ‘group person’
to join Alton Water Volunteers. Help is required in many areas
and individuals have helped in carrying out bird surveys, badger
watching, photography and data inputting.
If you think you might like to get involved, without
any long-term commitment, then why not find out how to join
us. We normally meet twice a month, on the first Saturday and
the middle Wednesday, starting at 9am and finishing and 1pm
so you don’t need to commit to a full day. The exact nature
of each meeting will vary according to weather and numbers but
we try to stick to the programme under ‘when we do it’
whenever possible.
