In this episode, Sustainability Champion Katherine Mayfield tells us what’s been happening to boost biodiversity on campus, what creatures we can find and how people can get involved.
Dan: Hello, I'm Dan Hall and I work here at Warwick. I'm a keen bird watcher, moth enthusiast, and fascinated by the wildlife here on campus. Welcome back to Autumn at Warwick.
In this episode, we'll be exploring what's being done on campus to improve biodiversity and finding out why tiny deer are causing a big headache.
Katherine: We are looking at doing lots of initiative to protect, create, and enhance the spaces that we do have.
This includes lots of different activities such as tree planting, wildflower area creation, and pond restoration. We do the litter picking. We are creating new habitats and joining up habitats by creating wildlife highways.
And early this year we had some pond restoration work undertaken on a couple of ponds over at Cryfield. One of the impacts of this, as we've since seen at least one Kingfisher on the site, he's a regular visitor.
In the autumn, the Fox cubs will have left their dens, so you'll most likely to see foxes out by themselves before dawn or after dusk, looking for food to fatten themselves up in preparation for the winter.
We are aware that we have Muntjac deer on campus. They're not a native species and have been spread from the southeast of England. We are monitoring them as we are aware that they are a conservation concern. They affect the woodland ground flora.
There are lots of opportunities to get involved with species surveys on campus. They will start again probably in earliest in March and April when we start to do hedgehog surveys.
If people register to be a green champion, they will receive a monthly newsletter with a list of all the forthcoming events. There's also an events page on our website with all these surveys on them, and you can often find them on insite as well. As well as the regular monthly surveys that we have.
We also encourage people to record the wildlife that they see when they're out on campus, perhaps over a lunchtime period. We encourage people to use the iNaturalist app, which is user friendly for anybody.
The data that comes from iNaturalist we can use to inform decisions as how we manage our campus for wildlife.
Meet Katherine
Katherine Mayfield champions all things green for the University.
Katherine's Top Tips:
If you're interested in hearing more about wildlife and sustainability activities on campus, you can sign up to be a Green Champion. By signing up you will:
Have access to our Green Champion Staff and PGR Teams channel.
Receive our monthly newsletter with the latest sustainability news and biodiversity events.
Be invited to bi-monthly meetings to ask us questions and engage with other Green Champions.
You can also click the 'Notify' button in the top right-hand corner of the Sustainability Events page to keep updated on upcoming events, including biodiversity walks and surveys.
Download theiNaturalist app to help us keep track of the wildlife we have at Warwick.
