How Can I Help ?

HOW TO HELP

Firstly if you are reading this you must be interested in wildlife and would like to make Norley a better place for it and by doing so a better place for all of us. Climate change, the increasing degradation of our planet where human beings are using more resources than are sustainable, can lead to a feeling of helplessness possibly even of despair. It is worth recalling one of Gandhi’s wise observations: You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results. Norley Wildlife Group over the past 9 years by doing something has shown things can be improved and with your help made even better. We couldn’t have done any of this on our own and the Useful Contacts page gives some of the organisations that proved vital and will help you too in getting advice and information.

Norley Wildlife Group’s message Think Global Act Local has been around almost a couple of decades but it is just as relevant now. Bearing in mind it’s estimated that we have less than 10 years to save the planet from a temperature rise of less than 2°C possibly even more so, it’s already 1.2°C.

Sir David Attenborough has already clearly spelled it out

“Never before have we been so aware of what we are doing to our planet – and never before have we had such power to do something about it. Surely we have a responsibility to care for the planet on which we live?

The future of humanity and indeed of all life on Earth, now depends on us doing so. “

We do indeed have to consider the health of the entire planet but at the very least take action in our own community and come together to protect habitats and the organisms that live within them. Norley has done a lot but we all, including Norley Wildlife Group can do so much more.

So it’s not too late to still help make Norley an even better place for all its inhabitants, improve our health and well being and possibly make a difference to the planet however minute.

REDUCE YOUR IMPACT ON THE PLANET

Just walking or cycling to the Stores will reduce your carbon footprint and make you fitter! Buying more locally also helps the neighbourhood and the environment.  Sir David Attenborough’s advice to children not to waste things, holds good for us grown-ups too “Don’t waste electricity, don’t waste paper, don’t waste food. Live the way you want to live but just don’t waste. Look after the natural world, and the animals in it, and the plants in it too. This is their planet as well as ours. Don’t waste them.”

NURTURE WILDLIFE 

Visit Norley Wildlife Group’s Memorial Garden to get ideas to make your garden wilder. Chester Zoo’s useful guide  shows how you can make your garden wildlife friendly. Click here to open it in a new browser tab.

The RSPB website gives advice on how to attract birds to your garden by feeding them and providing clean water. Food scraps are great for birds. As well as bird food you can put out leftovers such as small amounts of bread, fruit cake, dried fruit, unsalted nuts, or fruit such as apples and pears. Take care to avoid anything mouldy or salty, and remember if you have a dog don’t put out dried fruit – vine fruits such as raisins can prove toxic to them.

See https://www.rspb.org.uk/helping-nature/what-you-can-do/activities/feed-the-birds 

Do you really need to use pesticides, these can not only harm wildlife directly but can also take away valuable sources of food? Don’t cut hedges between March and August. Leave Ivy berries alone, they are a valuable often vital food for birds in the late winter/early spring, weight for weight they have the same number of calories as a Mars bar!

Do you have to cut the lawn to within an inch of its life? Letting insects visit the flowers in the grass will help wildlife thrive. 

Does your garden help pollinators? Top ten plants for bees are Crocus spp, Galanthus spp (snowdrop), Hellebores spp, Salvias spp, Rudbeckia, Cosmos Lavandula spp, Sedums, Echinacea and Verbena spp.

See https://www.bbka.org.uk/gardening-for-bees.

Plant a tree, see https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/plant-trees/advice/  This as well providing food for wildlife (and you if it’s a fruit tree) will “eat up” carbon dioxide

Make a bumblebee nest or provide homes for Solitary bees – see Bumble Bee Conservation https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/

Are there gaps in your fences for hedgehogs?  They travel over 3 Kilometres a night looking for slugs sails and crunchy beetles to eat.

HELP CHILDREN APPRECIATE THE WONDER OF THE LIVING WORLD

Children are the stewards of the future, encouraging their innate curiosity and giving them that understanding is literally vital. This is part of Norley Wildlife Group’s terms of reference but everyone who has children in their charge can do their bit. At a talk on bees and flowers, Years 1 & 2 at Norley Primary School were as interested and as captivated as the speaker in nature and the marvellous world of honeybees, bumble bees and solitary bees.

This embodied the truth of Sir David Attenborough’s words “The natural world is the greatest source of excitement, the greatest source of visual beauty. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living. An understanding of the natural world is a source of not only great curiosity, but great fulfilment.”

RECORD WILDLIFE

The “Useful contacts” page gives advice on the annual nationwide survey of birds and butterflies and the City Nature Challenge for RECORD. This all helps to give a better picture of the Biodiversity wellness. But Norley Wildlife Group also values information on wildlife – the Norley Garden Wildlife survey in Spring and Autumn has provided a very satisfying list of wildlife. We also have a map of Norley both at the Primary school and at the Garden show which people can mark where they have seen wildlife, augmenting our own observations and habitat mapping. 

SUPPORT ORGANISATIONS THAT HELP WILDLIFE

Join the Cheshire Wildlife Trust (https://www.cheshirewildlifetrust.org.uk/). As set out in USEFUL CONTACTS they do an immense amount in Cheshire including Norley. But charity begins at home! So support Norley Wildlife Group, our workdays (see WHAT’S ON) are not back breaking labour and can be fun working with like minded people.   The satisfying crunch of Himalayan balsam being jumped on cannot be bettered.  Seeing the bluebells and daffodils in the Wild Wood flowering without being hidden under brambles or Wickentree Moss free of bracken, all give the good feeling of a job well done.  But if coming to our meetings or volunteering isn’t your cup of tea then at least make a financial contribution.

DONATE

Norley Wildlife Group is staffed entirely by volunteers but money is needed to pay for Public Liability Insurance, for the maintenance of the WildNorley website, and for sundries such as laminating pouches and print cartridges. Most however goes on bulbs seeds and plants or to make major changes like pathways or to landscape a wildflower meadow.

If you contact out treasurer Sheila Hills 01928 787122,  she will give you our bank details. If it is a smaller sum, then pop it in the Norley Wildlife Group “tube” at the Stores. Copies of the Wildflower Map and guide can be purchased at the Stores for £1.00, as well as a numbered print of the lovely map signed by the artist Ann Crawford for £10.00.