Celebrating our valued, varied and versatile volunteers in 2024

admin
, 03 December 2024
Celebrating our valued, varied and versatile volunteers in 2024
Digging a scrape with Wilder Ouse © Roz Bassford

Julia Hoare & Alice Oakley

Volunteer Coordinators 

In 2024, approximately 1000 amazing volunteers have supported the work of Sussex Wildlife Trust in a variety of ways.

Volunteer highlights this year have included the introduction of our on-line interest talks, which have proved really popular and have added to a sense of community. Our inaugural talk in January was ‘Making of Sussex’ by Director of Conservation Henri Brocklebank. We went on to offer talks on Our Sussex Seas, Our Wild Sussex, Beavers of Sussex and an Offbeat Ecological Ramble through our Nature Reserve.

During National Volunteers Week in June, many of our volunteers joined us for specially organised guided walks and refreshments, providing a real sense of community and a great chance to share ideas.

Rye Harbour NR volunteers © Laura Ross

These are some of the many and varied roles you have undertaken for us across a variety of nature reserves and projects over the last year:

Planting, Popping, Processing and Planning

Volunteers have been involved with planting trees and hedgerows for habitat creation with our Wilder Horsham District and Wilder Ouse projects, popping Birch and Pine saplings on Nature Reserves with the conservation Hit Squads to open up areas for other species, processing coppiced material to make brash bundles for leaky dams and processing data about Kelp, WildCall and membership enquiries. We even have a volunteer who has helped us scrutinise planning applications for their potential impact on Sussex wildlife.

Malling Down volunteers © Roz Bassford

Guiding, Gardening and Gatwick Greenspace

Guides in the Hides and wardens at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, a Wildlife Gardening group at Woods Mill and a range of volunteers support the Gatwick Greenspace Partnership - a fabulous multi-faceted cross-county project that celebrated its 30th anniversary this year.

GGP volunteers © Kevin Lerwill

Lookering, Leading and Learning

Lookerers have been helping our Grazing Team to keep an eye on the welfare and security of our conservation grazing animals. Walk Leaders and Volunteer Reserve Managers have been leading walking and conservation groups for us at a number of our reserves across Sussex, and Education volunteers have been supporting Wilder Learning staff with environmental groups for young people - such as Wildlife Rangers and Youth Rangers.

Serving, Surveying and the Seashore

Volunteers have been serving visitors in the Rye Harbour Visitor Centre café and shop; Surveyors have been counting and submitting data about butterflies, breeding birds and beach litter. Marine volunteers have been surveying seaweeds and seashells on the seashore as a part of Shoresearch – a citizen science volunteer programme that monitors marine life in the intertidal zone on the Sussex coast.

Shoresearch volunteers © Kai Hilton

Repairs, Removals, Rivers and the rest

Conservation group volunteers have been helping us to repair gates and fences, clearing scrub and invasives species like Himalayan Balsam, and restoring natural flow rates in rivers with leaky dams and scrapes and creating habitats such as widening hedgerows for Nightingales and opening up areas of scrub for Heather and other wild flowers.

Thank you to all our volunteers, and we wish you a very Happy New Year!

Leave a comment
Time Δ Debug Message - Perch Runway 3.2
1787466382.4570 [907] SELECT p.pagePath, pr.routePattern, pr.routeRegExp, p.pageTemplate, pr.routeOrder, s.settingValue AS siteOffline FROM swt_pages_staging p LEFT JOIN swt_page_routes pr ON p.pageID=pr.pageID LEFT JOIN swt_settings s ON s.settingID='siteOffline' UNION SELECT NULL AS pagePath, pr2.routePattern, pr2.routeRegExp, pr2.templatePath AS pageTemplate, pr2.routeOrder, NULL AS siteOffline FROM swt_page_routes pr2 WHERE templateID!=0 ORDER BY routeOrder ASC, pagePath ASC
1787466382.49540.0385Matched route: news/[slug:s]
1787466382.49560.0002Server address: 216.73.217.165
1787466382.49560Using master page: /templates/pages/blog/post.php
1787466382.49560Page arguments: 
Array
(
    [0] => /news/celebrating-our-valued-varied-and-versatile-volunteers-in-2024
    [s] => celebrating-our-valued-varied-and-versatile-volunteers-in-2024
    [1] => celebrating-our-valued-varied-and-versatile-volunteers-in-2024
)
1787466382.4960.0003 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1787466382.49710.0012 [86] SELECT DISTINCT settingID, settingValue FROM swt_settings WHERE userID=0
1787466382.49960.0025 [1] SELECT locationID FROM swt_shop_tax_locations WHERE locationIsHome=1 LIMIT 1
1787466382.50020.0006INSERT INTO swt_shop_cart(memberID,locationID,currencyID,cartPricing,cartProperties) VALUES(NULL,'1',47,'standard','[]')
1787466382.53980.0395 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_shop_cart WHERE cartID=24399889
1787466382.54090.0012 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_shop_cart WHERE cartID=24399889
1787466382.54190.001 [nil] SELECT * FROM swt_shop_sales WHERE saleFrom<='2026-08-23 06:26:00' AND saleTo>'2026-08-23 06:26:00' AND saleActive=1 AND saleDeleted IS NULL ORDER BY saleOrder ASC
1787466382.54360.0017 [1] SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS DISTINCT tbl.* FROM ( SELECT idx.itemID, main.*, idx2.indexValue as sortval FROM swt_blog_index idx JOIN swt_blog_posts main ON idx.itemID=main.postID AND idx.itemKey='postID' JOIN swt_blog_index idx2 ON idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemKey='postID' AND idx2.indexKey='_id' WHERE 1=1 AND ((idx.indexKey='postSlug' AND idx.indexValue='celebrating-our-valued-varied-and-versatile-volunteers-in-2024')) AND idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemKey=idx2.itemKey GROUP BY idx.itemID, idx2.indexValue, postID ) as tbl WHERE (postStatus='Published' AND postDateTime<='2026-08-23 06:26:00' ) GROUP BY itemID, sortval ORDER BY sortval ASC LIMIT 0, 10
1787466382.54830.0046 [1] SELECT FOUND_ROWS() AS `count`
1787466382.54920.0009 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_posts WHERE postID=3597 AND postStatus='Published' AND postDateTime<='2026-08-23 06:26:00'
1787466382.55050.0013 [13] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_sections ORDER BY sectionTitle ASC
1787466382.55140.0009 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blogs ORDER BY blogTitle ASC
1787466382.55230.0009 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_categories WHERE catID=47 LIMIT 1
1787466382.55320.0009Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1787466382.55350.0003 [162] SELECT catID, catPath FROM swt_categories
1787466382.55470.0012 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_posts WHERE postStatus='Published' AND postDateTime<='2026-08-23 06:26:00' AND postSlug='celebrating-our-valued-varied-and-versatile-volunteers-in-2024'
1787466382.58610.0314Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1787466382.58690.0008 [250] SELECT country, countryID FROM swt_shop_countries WHERE countryActive=1 ORDER BY country ASC
1787466382.5890.0022Using template: /templates/pages/attributes/seo.html
1787466382.58930.0002 [1] SELECT regionID, regionTemplate, regionPage, regionRev AS rev FROM swt_content_regions WHERE regionKey='Banner image' AND (regionPage='/news/post' OR regionPage='*')
1787466382.59040.0012 [nil] SELECT * FROM ( SELECT idx.itemID, c.regionID, idx.pageID, c.itemJSON, idx2.indexValue as sortval FROM swt_content_index idx JOIN swt_content_items c ON idx.itemID=c.itemID AND idx.itemRev=c.itemRev AND idx.regionID=c.regionID JOIN swt_content_index idx2 ON idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemRev=idx2.itemRev AND idx2.indexKey='_order' WHERE ((idx.regionID=104 AND idx.itemRev=0)) AND idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemRev=idx2.itemRev ) as tbl GROUP BY itemID, pageID, itemJSON, sortval, regionID ORDER BY sortval ASC
1787466382.59230.0019 [82] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageDepth >=0 AND pageDepth<=2 ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1787466382.5970.0047 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1787466382.59790.0009 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1787466382.60140.0034Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template.html
1787466382.60140.0001 [6] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1787466382.60230.0009 [4] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1787466382.6030.0007 [29] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1787466382.60560.0026 [10] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1787466382.60670.001 [7] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1787466382.60760.0009 [9] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1787466382.61050.0029 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' OR pageSortPath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1787466382.61170.0012 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageHidden=0 AND pageNew=0 AND pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition
1787466382.61530.0035 [1] Using template: /templates/navigation/breadcrumbs.html
1787466382.61580.0006Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1787466382.61610.0003 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_authors WHERE authorID='1' LIMIT 1
1787466382.61720.0011Using template: /templates/blog/author.html
1787466382.61760.0004 [1] SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS DISTINCT tbl.* FROM ( SELECT idx.itemID, main.*, idx2.indexValue as sortval FROM swt_blog_index idx JOIN swt_blog_posts main ON idx.itemID=main.postID AND idx.itemKey='postID' JOIN swt_blog_index idx2 ON idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemKey='postID' AND idx2.indexKey='_id' WHERE 1=1 AND ((idx.indexKey='postSlug' AND idx.indexValue='celebrating-our-valued-varied-and-versatile-volunteers-in-2024')) AND idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemKey=idx2.itemKey GROUP BY idx.itemID, idx2.indexValue, postID ) as tbl WHERE (postStatus='Published' AND postDateTime<='2026-08-23 06:26:00' ) GROUP BY itemID, sortval ORDER BY sortval ASC LIMIT 0, 1
1787466382.62110.0034 [1] SELECT FOUND_ROWS() AS `count`
1787466382.62180.0007 [1] Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1787466382.62460.0028Using template: /templates/blog/comment_form.html
1787466382.62570.0011 [nil] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_comments WHERE 1=1 AND postID=3597 AND commentStatus='LIVE' ORDER BY FIELD(webmentionType, 'like', 'repost', 'comment', NULL) ASC, commentDateTime ASC
1787466382.70190.0762 [0] Using template: /templates/blog/comment.html
1787466382.70210.0002Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1787466382.70230.0002 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_authors WHERE authorID='1' LIMIT 1
1787466382.70330.0009 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/what-we-do' OR pageSortPath='/what-we-do' LIMIT 1
1787466382.70420.001 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition='000-002' LIMIT 1
1787466382.70510.0008 [7] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageTreePosition LIKE '000-002%' AND pageDepth >=1 AND pageDepth<=2 ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1787466382.70810.0031 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1787466382.70890.0007 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1787466382.71170.0028 [6] Using template: /templates/navigation/footer-nav.html
1787466382.71280.0011 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/make-a-difference' OR pageSortPath='/make-a-difference' LIMIT 1
1787466382.71360.0007 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition='000-005' LIMIT 1
1787466382.71420.0006 [38] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageTreePosition LIKE '000-005%' ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1787466382.71750.0033 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1787466382.71820.0008 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1787466382.72110.0029 [10] Using template: /templates/navigation/footer-nav.html
1787466382.72450.0033 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/visit' OR pageSortPath='/visit' LIMIT 1
1787466382.72540.0009 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition='000-004' LIMIT 1
1787466382.72610.0007 [30] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageTreePosition LIKE '000-004%' AND pageDepth >=1 AND pageDepth<=2 ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1787466382.72950.0035 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1787466382.73040.0009 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1787466382.73320.0029 [29] Using template: /templates/navigation/footer-nav.html
1787466382.7360.0028 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/make-a-difference' OR pageSortPath='/make-a-difference' LIMIT 1
1787466382.73720.0012 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition='000-005' LIMIT 1
1787466382.7380.0008 [11] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageTreePosition LIKE '000-005%' AND pageDepth >=1 AND pageDepth<=2 ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1787466382.74150.0036 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1787466382.74230.0008 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1787466382.74520.0029 [10] Using template: /templates/navigation/footer-nav.html
1787466382.74670.0014Request time: 0.2924
1787466382.74680.0001Process time: 0.2924
1787466382.74680Memory: 1.6507