Continuing our volunteering spotlight this week on the Brecks - our Brecks Community Engagement Officer, Sammy Fraser tells us why the Brecks are so important and why the Brecks needs you!...
The Brecks encompasses both Suffolk and Norfolk in its boundary, spanning approximately a 1,000 square kilometres and featuring the towns of Thetford, Brandon, Swaffham, Mildenhall and Watton. It is a completely unique landscape in the UK with dry, sandy and flinty soils, low rainfall and greater extremes in temperature and a unique land use history. Not only is the Brecks unique but it also jam packed with an astounding amount of wildlife, 12,845 different species! Some of which are found nowhere else in the UK! Like the tiny but beautiful breckland thyme and breckland speedwell plants.
Photo: Breckland thyme by Charlotte Lowry
The work of the RSPB in the Brecks falls under the umbrella of Futurescapes, which is the RSPBs approach to landscape conservation. The work of our team is very varied ranging from working with farmers to protect stone-curlews, helping farmers give nature a home on farmland, working with our partners to protect and enhance wildlife in the Brecks and running community engagement work. I have been working in the Brecks for over a year now as the Brecks Community Engagement Officer, and I will confess that despite its importance for UK wildlife I had never heard of the Brecks or Breckland before I started this role.
And I am not alone in having never heard of the Brecks or appreciating how rich it’s wildlife and heritage is, and this is where my role and our community engagement work comes in. The aim of our community engagement work and the varied events we run is to raise the profile of the Brecks through increasing local understanding and pride. As part of this I run a varied events programme in the Brecks with the aim of engaging with local people and providing them with opportunities to get outdoors and enjoy the Brecks. The events are very varied ranging from our monthly adult and family walks in Thetford, camping events in the forest, stone-curlew roost events and our annual Wild about the Brecks celebration.
And this is where my fantastic team of volunteers come in! Our volunteer team are helping spread the word about the Brecks by engaging with local people and visitors at our events. There are lots of different things our volunteer team get up to with our community work.
My team of Event Assistants get stuck in and help out with our varied events programme, so they could be spotting wildlife on a guided walk, running children’s activities, bug hunting or even camping out in Thetford Forest listening to nightjars and spotting glow-worms. All the while doing a fantastic job at promoting the Brecks and sharing their enthusiasm for this unique area.
Photo: This years popular stone-curlew roost events, we were treated to a stunning sunset and listening to them ‘wailing’ at dusk as they headed of to feed. Photo by Sammy Fraser
We are also involved in Breaking New Ground which is a Heritage Lottery Funded project bringing 37 different projects to the Brecks. With our partners the Forestry Commission and Norfolk Wildlife Trust we are running a unique project as part of this- Wings over the Brecks. This project is unlocking the door to the secret lives of some star species in the Brecks; stone-curlew, woodlark, goshawk and nightjar. The project is streaming live nest camera footage of these species, bringing to life the daily dramas and antics of these enigmatic but secretive birds. This footage is being streamed to the Forestry Commissions High Lodge Thetford Forest Centre, Norfolk Wildlife Trusts Weeting Heath and roaming displays in town centres. Helping to provide local people and visitors with a unique opportunity to watch these Brecks stars. As part of this project we are looking for a team of volunteers to help bring to life the footage by engaging with local people and visitors at High Lodge and to help our with the projects events programme.
Photo: Stone-curlew by Chris Knights, one of the star species being filmed as part of Wings over the Brecks next year.
Photo: Nest camera being set up on a hobby nest as part of Wings over the Brecks this year, the chicks were dubbed ‘posh and brecks’. Photo by James Wheeler, Urban Forestry Ltd.
And we are also looking for local people to help us get great shots of the Brecks, this could be the stunning landscape features in the Brecks landscape, wildlife in the Brecks or people enjoying our events or getting outdoors. Our volunteer photographer Ian Smith provides brilliant shots which we use to promote our events and the Brecks through social media, talks and even press releases and feature pieces. So if you love taking pictures we’d love to hear from you! Our volunteer team are doing a fantastic job at promoting the Brecks to local residents and sharing their passion for the area. By doing this we are increasing local pride and knowledge, and support for the work the RSPB and our partners do for nature in the Brecks Futurescape. But we’d like to meet even more people! And this is why we need you! We couldn’t run our events and community engagement work without the help of our brilliant volunteers, so why not join our team and make a different to this unique landscape and the special wildlife that relies on it?
Want to Volunteer? Ask me!