I recently had the great privilege of standing on a high point to look over the amazing new landscape we are creating at Grimston Warren., Chopping down trees might seem an odd thing for Norfolk Wildlife Trust to be doing when everybody thinks we should be planting them to offset our carbon footprint.

Tim Cawkwell has been elected as the new Chairman of Norfolk Wildlife Trust, following the end of John Austen’s term. He comes to NWT as chairman after a career in management in the not-for-profit sector.

Since recovering from the remarkable, prolonged high water levels of last summer, we have had some very good conditions for our work on the Broadland Fens.

Peter Simpson from Necton has won first prize in the BirdGuides Photo of the Year 2007 contest, with a picture he took at Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Weeting Heath. He tells us how it came about:

One of the most fascinating influxes this autumn was the arrival of several great white egrets to the UK. These elegant white heron sized birds have their breeding headquarters in south-eastern Europe, but have gradually colonised areas to the north and west.

Standing on the beach at Cromer and looking out to sea, it is difficult to imagine that just offshore and under the water there is a rich and varied wildlife. It includes the famous ‘Cromer’ crab but also a surprising range of marine life from starfish and anemones to spawning grounds of commercially important fish.

I still have my first notebook, dating from when I was 13 years old and had first started to 'go birdwatching'. It is not terribly inspiring, partly because my handwriting was so bad, but it does have a few interesting sketches and I would not part with it. We are all encouraged to keep notes, but in this era of computers and digital cameras, it seems to be a dying art, although I remain a great fan of pen-and-paper.

Norfolk Wildlife Services is the consultancy arm of Norfolk Wildlife Trust and undertakes protected species workCouncils in Norwich and the surrounding districts have been consulting on the future direction of growth in the Norwich area, including seeking views on the implications of this growth for the environment.

The heathland (dry heath and wet heath) and mire habitats which we hope to reinstate on Grimston Warren are internationally threatened and as a consequence, internationally rare. These habitats all have Biodiversity Action Plans (BAP) and are recognised as habitats that require protection, support and where possible re-creation.

Norfolk Wildlife Services reports on how the international Convention on Biological Diversity is being delivered at a local level through the NERC Act.

The Wildlife Trusts (TWT) are campaigning against proposals in the Government’s current Planning Bill for a new system to deal with major developments. These changes, including the setting up of an Independent Planning Commission (IPC) to make decisions on large-scale infrastructure projects, could threaten wildlife habitats across England.

Dragonflies in Focus is an exciting new project launched by the British Dragonfly Society. Its four aims are to develop a sustainable system for gathering and managing dragonfly data; to provide access to reliable information about dragonflies; to raise awareness of dragonflies by increasing public participation in their study; and to produce a revised atlas of their distribution.

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