Friday 11 September 2015

Ponds, pirates and pooters: the past few months with the Wild Lizard Project

The past six months has seen pirates, elves and giant sea monsters at Poltesco with Mullion School, a small army of school children all investigating the amazing ponds at Windmill Farm and more seashore shenanigans that you can shake a piece of seaweed at!

Gathering seaweed on a blustery Poldhu beach to create a mermaid 
The Wild Lizard Project is now in its third year and is a joint funded project hosted by the National Trust in partnership with Natural England, the Helford Voluntary Marine Conservation Area Group and Cornwall Wildlife Trust. The project’s aim is to provide opportunities for children and their families to become more involved in their natural environment.
 From January until July this year the project has hosted over 1028 school children’s visits, worked with twelve schools from on the Lizard and beyond and has delivered and supported the delivery of 50 school visits in seven months ...phew! 

Pre-summer we had also run eight public events engaging with 84 children and 66 adults both locals and visitors, took part in three larger joint events with the tenants at Tregullas farm for Open Farm Sunday, Helford VMCA Cruise and Penrose Team for the Big Beach Picnic. We also had the opportunity to run the Forest Schools Association South West bi-annual meeting at Tremayne Woods.

At Open Farm Sunday at Tregullas Farm
The Forest School Gathering saw Forest School leaders from all over the South West for a weekend meeting and skills share at Tremayne Quay 




This year has seen the involvement of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust, where the project organised and ran a series of events, talks, scrub bashes and study days as part of their Lizard Horizons - The Landewednack Windmill Conservation and Environmental Education Project.
Six classes came out to investigate the pristine ponds at Windmill Farm as part of the Cornwall Wildlife Trusts project
A series of study days was also organised at Windmill Farm run by local ecology experts
Tom in action at Windmill Farm!

We have been busy which is fantastic as it shows the project is very much valued locally by schools and their families as a provider of exciting experiences in the outdoors. None of which could be done without our amazing volunteers! As well as having Tom, our full time Volunteer Education Ranger on board we have had two work experience students and lots of time given by the National Trust volunteers. Over the past seven months (Jan-July) the project has received 878 volunteer hours and still counting!

Looking forward to the coming months, lots of schools are booking in making the most of the autumn weather and we have our October half term events. If you would like more information about the project or the visits and events we offer please go to the Linking the Lizard website (www.the-lizard.org) or drop me a line Claire.Scott@nationaltrust.org.uk

1 comment:

  1. Wild lizard project really did intrigue me when i came across it for the first time! i must say that these posts are super fun

    ReplyDelete

Contact us

Name

Email *

Message *