...Says Wildlife Warrior Stand for Nature Wales member Aidan

Hello, I’m Aidan and I joined the SFNW project in May 2023 and I can proudly say that it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made towards my desire to help the environment in any way that I can in my personal life. I had been looking for a nature group and I was lucky enough to be pointed in the direction of an amazing opportunity in Magor. I also joined because my desired career would be a role in conservation and I also wanted to find some way to turn my fairly large amount of eco-anxiety into positive action and change. Personally, I’d say that’s one of the beautiful things about being a member of the SFNW group because it does remind me of the hope that still exists to save the environment despite the large amount of anxiety-inducing climate news out there. In the group I have learnt a lot about different species, different methods of conservation and monitoring, which has meant that I have able to actively help out GWT with surveys such the Harvest Mouse survey training day in February, which I greatly enjoyed. Luckily, the rain stayed away until we had finished our surveying and I managed to list lots of sightings we made as a group using the Mammal Mappers app by the Mammal Society and I have submitted this. I personally found a water vole feeding site, a field vole nest and one of the 5 Harvest mouse nests that we found, which I am immensely proud of as I’m very happy that Harvest mice are still present at Magor Marsh after the last recording GWT had of harvest mice on the reserve was from 2014. I hope to volunteer and take part in many more activities just like this in the future to help build up my practical skills and most of all, help GWT in their amazingly admirable work to conserve all the precious species we are blessed with on the Gwent Levels. 

School PSHE Week- ‘Save the Gwent Levels Again’ Petition

One of the ways being part of the SFNW project has inspired me is to do more work in my school, alongside our most environmentally passionate teacher, to help support the environment and maintain our Eco Schools status. What gave me the opportunity to help do this is how I was very kindly voted onto the Community Ministry as the Environmental Leader back in October and, as I was inspired to support this petition after attending and speaking at GWT’s AGM in Usk in September 2023, I suggested that we run a campaign to support the petition within our school community. At first, this involved creating a presentation to be shown in the PSHE sessions of the week commencing January 14th in afternoon form registration sessions, across the whole school.  My teacher also asked me to create an article on the Gwent Levels to support the petition to go into the Autumn edition of the school’s Insight magazine. I’m sure this helped raise awareness and support amongst parents and everyone in the wider school community. I also arranged for GWT staff members Petra and Beccy to come in on Wednesday the 16th of January to meet Year 8 and talk about GWT, it’s work to conserve species as well as to SFNW’s Pesticide Campaign, especially pet treatments like Spot-On. I am very grateful to Petra, Beccy and GWT for offering to support me in this. Overall, I’d say the week was a success, as I had heard from people that many forms enjoyed learning about the Gwent Levels. During this week, I’d estimate that I helped GWT get 177 signatures for the Senedd petition to “Save The Gwent Levels” and 51 signatures for the GWT Website petition so this was great news, as my target for was at least 100 signatures. 

Future Endeavours in Environmental Work at my School

Since then, I have been working on my next planned project - to create a school litter picking group. I was inspired to work on this as one of my projects in Year 12 because litter has always been a visible issue at my school on our school yards and school grounds since I was in Year 7 and I’ve felt eager to help try and solve this issue before I leave in Year 13 and hopefully this will inspire other passionate pupils like me in the years below me to carry on the good work.

In October, I applied for our school to take part in the Keep Wales Tidy Litter Free Zones project and my application was successful! In December, I was informed by Aimee from Keep Wales Tidy that she had managed to find funding for us to receive a litter picking kit for our school: I was very impressed with this progress. However, we’re still eagerly awaiting the arrival of the kit, hopefully ready for the Summer Term for us to hold a workshop and our very first litter pick. I will be sure to update Petra and Beccy on this once I have any more news so if you are interested in how I am progressing, please do contact them.

I have also joined a group called Keep Chepstow Tidy and I’ve started volunteering with them to help litter-pick and clean up areas around Chepstow. At first-hand I feel I have experienced the benefits of turning all that negativity surrounding litter in my local community into positive action, so I am very proud of what our group and I have been able to accomplish so far.

The other project that I am still working is setting up an ‘Eco Warriors’ lunchtime club at my school, in cooperation with Petra and Beccy from Gwent Wildlife trust, and a small group of passionate individuals from Years 7 and 8. The plan is to help them learn more about nature, how to protect it and to be able to carry out mini-projects at our school to help the environment such as planting a wildflower meadow, which I’m sure would be lovely for all the visitors and parents to see each day. So far, my teacher has put together a small group of eco-passionate individuals from Year 7, so I am very grateful to him for his hard work and dedication towards my project. 

Finally, I would like to thank the reader for taking the time to read this as I greatly appreciate this opportunity to share what I’ve been up to both inside and outside of school to help the environment and, also, to give back to GWT, who I am eternally grateful to for this wonderful SFNW project. It truly has influenced my life for the better and I hope to put all that I’ve learnt to use in the coming years to help the environment. Thank you very much.