CRKC attends the Cumbria Wildlife Trust Annual Members meeting

The Clean River Kent Campaign was very pleased to be invited to contribute to a panel discussion at this years Cumbria Wildlife Trust annual members conference at Rhegged on the 13th September. The panel was chaired by Jody Ferguson from the Cumbria local Nature Partnership. Panel members were Tanya Hoare of the Sedbergh Community Swift group; Marion Jones of the Cumbria Wildlife Trust; Beth Moore, Nature Manager at Westmorland and Furness Council; and Dave Plumb for CRKC.

Westmorland and Furness Council are coordinating a Cumbria wide response to the Cumbria Local Nature Recovery Strategy, which is a government mandated high level document. The aim of the panel was to discuss ways to encourage and support local groups to contribute to nature recovery in their own area, be that in rural or urban environments, at whatever scale they have the capability to act.

Whilst this was not really an opportunity to showcase what the volunteers of the Clean River Kent Campaign have achieved over the last four years, we were able to contribute positively to the discussion on barriers to setting up local groups, how groups can evolve from just a couple concerned people to involvement of a much larger group of people such as in our case campaigning on three interrelated themes, the political, citizen science, and community outreach.

Local nature recovery and its future protection will depend heavily on volunteer groups like CRKC and the Sedbergh Swift group contributing to a mosaic of responses to the challenges facing the natural world in the face of the climate emergency. CRKC plans to be very much part of that response.