Making a difference for wildlife, and that’s a FACT

Froglife’s education and conservation projects have been working together to help improve habitats for a variety of species in London. The Froglife Action Conservation Team (FACT) came to the rescue of the London Great Crested Newt officer by creating bird and bat boxes, with a little help from Froglife’s Wildlife ambassadors. FACT works with young offenders and the Wildlife Ambassadors are part of a project helping those out of work take part in wildlife conservation. As well as providing valuable educational activities to take part in, both projects have been helping out on practical conservation.

“I never would have been able to afford to buy 20 bird and bat boxes for a habitat in Havering,” explains Sivi Sivanesan, London Great Crested Newt Officer. “The project budget was used to improve a pond through cutting back trees to reduce the amount of leaf fall and benefit the newts. Adding bird and bat boxes increases the potential for nesting birds after we removed some of their trees, and also improves the site for bats. Thanks to the time and enthusiasm that the education team put in, we were able to get these made for the cost of the material alone.”

The teams used the facilities at the Mears Training Academy to create different types of bird and bat boxes which made the journey south to London to be installed by the Parks department of the London Borough of Havering. Geoff Pepper from the Parks and Open Spaces team was delighted with the boxes, and has been taking them to some of the local schools to show them what they can do with a little inspiration.

A big thanks to the FACT and Wildlife Ambassador projects!

More information on our conservation and eduaction work is available at: http://www.froglife.org/