Marwell Wildlife Celebrates Student Volunteering Week 2011

24 February 2011

Sixteen gutsy students from the University of Winchester celebrated the tenth anniversary of Student Volunteering Week at Marwell Wildlife today by helping the conservation charity restore its ancient woodland habitat to create a nature reserve.

The students gave a helping hand by cutting down invasive species and preparing the ground for the planting of native plants and trees.

They were among thousands of students at around 60 institutions taking part in events across the country celebrating Student Volunteering Week 2011, co-ordinated by Volunteering England, a volunteering development charity.

The first year of Marwell’s restoration project is being supported by The Veolia Environmental Trust, which awarded a grant of £14,708 through the Landfill Communities Fund.

The students’ hard work will help improve the biological diversity of the habitat, which will in turn attract a wide range of native woodland wildlife to the area. Marwell hopes that many native mammals, including the nationally rare dormouse, will set up home in the nature reserve. Whilst rare birds, like the willow tit and nightingale will hopefully increase in numbers alongside other birds of conservation concern including the cuckoo, wood warbler and song thrush.

The 30 hectares of ancient woodland has become overgrown with invasive species such as rhododendron in recent years. It can spread over large areas quickly and shades out native plants, eventually creating a dense understorey in which no other plants can grow. The students helped remove around 2 tons, which will help enable native flowering plants to recolonise the area and will in turn attract a range of insects. 

University of Winchester Volunteering Co-ordinators, Nina Lazarski and Charlie MacKay joined the students in the woodland, Nina said: “It’s great to be here at Marwell Wildlife, all joining in together to help this wonderful charity. Students can sometimes have a bad reputation but the University of Winchester students have been so enthusiastic about getting involved with our volunteering programme, and in particular coming here and getting stuck in with this important woodland development. Today has been a great success and we hope to develop the scheme and come back to Marwell with our staff.”

Dr Guy Parker, Marwell’s Head of Biodiversity Management comments: “The work the students are doing today will help restore this special habitat in Hampshire, and bring this ancient woodland back to its former glory. The removal of invasive species, along with our other traditional management practices, such as coppicing and re-establishing woodland rides, will improve the habitat’s structural diversity and thus increase the variety of flora and fauna.”

The Executive Director of The Veolia Environmental Trust, Margaret Cobbold, says, 'It's good to hear that this project is going well and the new nature reserve is taking shape. It is very important to the Trust that volunteers are given the chance to get involved with schemes we support and I hope the students enjoyed themselves.’

The charity launched the nature reserve restoration project during National Tree Week 2010, when twenty volunteers from Veolia Environmental Services spent a day cutting down invasive species.

Marwell Wildlife welcomes enquiries from corporate teams and community groups looking to volunteer and connect with nature.  Each volunteer day at Marwell is unique and bespoke to the needs of each group. For more information visit Marwell’s website www.marwell.org.uk