‘Love Mother Nature’ – This is one of Fordhall Organic Farm’s organisational values, and so a large part of Fordhall’s ethos is driven by respecting and working with nature and the environment. Therefore, monitoring their on-site biodiversity is an important part of understanding how agricultural activities may have an impact.
According to IFOAM Organics Europe, organic farms and farming systems host around 30% more biodiversity. It is little wonder then, as you wander around Fordhall, you see an array of creatures that don’t belong to their livestock catalogue – bees, birds, dragonflies, demoiselles and even otters call the farmland their home.
With the warm June weather filtering though, and bringing with it the summer wildlife, the voluntary group ‘Joy of Wildlife’ visited the farm for one such surveying day. It so happened that a volunteer for the ‘Joy of Wildlife’ group (Fran) was a Fordhall supporter, and so on her suggestion they came bearing nets, ID guides, and insect pots to record Fordhall’s wildlife populations.
The group itself is a collection of volunteers who carry out biodiversity surveys all around Shropshire – established around 12 years ago, they grew somewhat organically from an insect survey group. People are welcome to join and stay as long as they like on each group outing – no wildlife surveying experience is necessary, more experienced group members are always happy to help identify finds and develop surveying skills. Keith Fowler, Joy of Wildlife leader, described it ‘as much a social group as a survey group.’
Fordhall Community Land Initiative Manager, Charlotte Hollins, said:
‘It was wonderful to welcome the ‘Joy of Wildlife’ volunteers to our site. Biodiversity monitoring helps us to ensure we are nurturing our natural environment. We are passionate about being part of the solution to the climate crisis and ecological emergency, and that means building ecological resilience as well as reducing our carbon footprint. ‘We’re looking forward to seeing their full catalogue of findings; but it was lovely to hear that that, amongst other things, they had found King Henry plants, which are edible perennials, and a large skipper, which is a beautiful orange day-flying moth.’
Visitors to the site are also welcomed to get involved with biodiversity surveying through Fordhall’s citizen science project ‘Nature Spotting’. Whenever some wildlife is spotted onsite, the public are encouraged to submit their findings at www.fordhallfarm.com/naturespotting/
