HELLO

A warm welcome back to our Friends of Bartonsham Meadows newsletter. Thank you so much for supporting our campaign.

Last night flood warnings were issued for the Wye which is a pollution concern as the meadows appear to have been sprayed recently. Please take care.

This month…

• We were informed by the Church Commissioners (the landowners) that the farm house, buildings, and higher paddock have been sold.
• The Church Commissioners invited us to partner with a grazier who shares our vision on an annual basis.
• We wrote a land management proposal for the Church Commissioners that sets out a vision for long term restoration of the meadows to species-rich floodplain management.
• We reached out, with Herefordshire Wildlife Trust, to potential grazing partners through the Hereford Green Network. 
• We have shared our management plan for the long term transformation of the meadows with Hereford Council, Jesse Norman MP, and the Bishop of Hereford.
• We have continued to share all of your wonderful pictures, videos and related events.
• Reached 100 followers on Instagram and in our Facebook group! Thanks for the support, if you haven’t yet, you can follow us here for Instagram and here on Facebook.

UPCOMING PLANS…

• We’ve got an exciting feature on a Virtual Tour of the Meadows this coming Tuesday (7:30pm) with Bartonsham History Group. Featuring a full bridge-to-bridge tour, discover hidden historical nuggets and an update on the meadows from us at FOBM. See the flyer below and email web@bartonshamhistory.org.uk to register. 
• We have further meetings scheduled over the next few weeks with the Church Commissioners and Hereford Council.
• We’re continuing to develop our campaign and communication strategy for 2021. Shout out any suggestions or ways in which you could help us.

We are always keen to support similar initiatives in the area. Here’s a list of events (and one TV programme) that might be of interest to you coming up in March…

• 2nd March 10am-1pm: Towards Net Zero Using Nature Based Solutions in Floodplains  – “The aim of this workshop will be to invite senior and informed speakers and participants to debate how we can optimise land use in floodplains to deliver nature based solutions to flood risk and diffuse pollution, the loss of biodiversity and human health crises.”  Contact Olivia Nelson to attend Olivia.nelson@open.ac.uk   
• 3rd March 1pm-1:30pm: Say Yes to Life: The Forgotten Problem – with Ruth Valerio “What does it mean to be human? What is our relationship with the world that we live in? What does our future look like?” Book here
• 17th March: Herefordshire Wildlife Trust City Branch Talk: Putting Herefordshire’s Wildlife into Recover: What do we need to do to create a county rich in wildlife? Nature Recovery Networks, Biodiversity Net Gain and the 30 by 30 campaign. Book here
• Available online now: Joanna Lumley’s Home Sweet Home Episode 3 includes a clip about a former dairy farm that has been re-wilded. 

AS ALWAYS, PLEASE COULD YOU…

• Record images and footage of the meadow, and share with us to keep a record and for use on social media.
• Share this newsletter with friends, family and anyone who could support us.
• Encourage friends to sign up to our mailing list and our social media feeds.
• Consider becoming a member of Herefordshire Wildlife Trust.
• Consider making a donation to our campaign here .
• Get in touch with feedback and ideas via email or social media

All the best

Friends of Bartonsham Meadows

HELLO

Firstly, if you’re new here (and we’ve had a few new sign-ups, up to 135 of you!) – a very warm welcome to Friends of Bartonsham Meadows. Thank you so much for choosing to support our campaign.

It’s been a busy month:

• We’ve spoken again with the land-owners, the Church Commissioners, alongside Herefordshire Wildlife Trust. We have set out our vision for how the land could be managed to transform it from intensive agriculture to outstanding natural habitat delivering broad social and environmental public goods. Our proposal centres biodiversity and regenerative land-management practices which we are endeavouring to establish on a long-term basis.
• Herefordshire Wildlife Trust City Branch kindly hosted a presentation about our project on Thursday 21 January. We were blown away by the turn out – a total of 64 of you! Thank you to everyone who came along. If you were unable to join us, you can view the recording of the presentation here.
• Anna Gundrey, Charlie Arthur and Ruth Westoby were interviewed by Nicola Goodwin of BBC Hereford & Worcester Radio which was broadcast Monday 18th January. Here is the recording. The interview and topic post on their Facebook page received some great feedback and lots of support which was really great to see. 
• Working group member and consultant ecologist Anna Gundrey has written a wonderful piece on the environmental case for a floodplain meadow at Bartonsham. It will be up on our website soon, but you can also read it here.

Of course, we’ve also been keeping our eye on the floods and the snow this month, see below some of the images we’ve gathered.. a huge thank you to the contributors!

UPCOMING PLANS…

We’ve been consulting with our working group on our 2021 priorities and strategy. If you would like to feed into this process please email us with suggestions for us to work on and any ways in which you could offer support through volunteering your time or expertise, or making a financial donation.

AS ALWAYS, PLEASE COULD YOU…

• Keep sending us your images and footage of the meadow, so we can keep a record and for use on social media.
• Share this newsletter with friends, family and anyone who could support us.
• Encourage friends to sign up to our mailing list and our social media feeds.
• Consider becoming a member of Herefordshire Wildlife Trust.
• Get in touch with feedback and ideas via email or social media.

All the best

Friends of Bartonsham Meadows

A PDF Version of this newsletter can be downloaded here

HELLO

Thank you for supporting positive ecological management of Bartonsham Meadows.

This month we have:

• Continued our discussions (online)with the Church Commissioners, with our next discussion scheduled for mid-January
• Improved our Stronger Towns Fund bid, lead by Herefordshire Wildlife Trust, and re-submitted it to the board
• Presented (Ruth) to the Community Association (online) introducing our project and giving an update on progress
• Planned to gather our finest ecology heads together for a walk-round and assessment of the state of the meadows with a focus on wildlife populations
• Reached 100 supporters!

COMING UP IN THE NEW YEAR…

We’re excited to have an online introductory event in January. Herefordshire Wildlife Trust City Branch are kindly hosting us to give a presentation about our project. There’ll be short talks from Andrew Nixon (Herefordshire Wildlife Trust), Anna Gundrey (ecology consultant), Bill Laws (historian), Ruth Westoby (FOBM convenor) and plenty of time for Q&A.

It will take place on 21st January at 7pm – sign up below! It would be great if you could spread the word and join us.

PLEASE COULD YOU…

• Record images and footage of the meadows, especially now the floods are up, and share with us to keep a record and for use on social media
• Donate to help our project grow (get in touch if you would like to make a donation)
• Encourage friends to sign up to our mailing list
• Consider joining Herefordshire Wildlife Trust
• Get in touch with feedback and ideas

This project has only been kicked around since February 2020 and since then we have been bowled over by the encouragement, engagement and support it’s received. In the teeth of an extraordinary and difficult year it has felt important and powerful to get active for positive change right on our doorstep. We’re so grateful for the generous donations which have enabled us to cover costs and develop the project. A huge thank you to everyone who has supported us, got involved and enabled this project to get off to such an awesome start.

Wishing you a peaceful 2021,

Friends of Bartonsham Meadows