Help keep Rookwood green

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The Keep Rookwood Green bio blitz on Saturday 15th August was an outstanding success which a stream of timed arrivals of families who went to record the wildlife.  The council plan to build 1,100 new houses on Roowood Golf Course, which is located next to Horsham’s nature reserve, this area makes up 28% of Horsham’s large green space.  This wildlife-rich natural world is vital for our wellbeing and survival, once built on it is lost and gone forever.

You can listen to the talk by Keep Rookwood Green and see their presentation here.

People are being encouraged to write to their councillors, sign the Keep Rookwood Green petition and carry out their own bio blitz on a day which suits you and any friends or family members. Use this map and log to plot your finds, take photos and share them in the social media with this hashtag #foundonrookwood. You can find Keep Rookwood Green social media details and the petition on this page.  Read more

Help Keep Rookwood Green!

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Join the Keep Rookwood Green Campaign on Saturday 15th August to become citizen scientists at this bio blitz, help carry out surveys to help record all living species in the area. You can book timed tickets for staggered visits through this Eventbrite link or learn more here  www.KeepRookWoodGreen.org.

Watch the talk Keep Rookwood Green gave at our Horsham Future Forum meeting on Tuesday 16th June here.

 

 

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29% of Horsham’s green space could be lost

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HELP KEEP ROOKWOOD GREEN PLEASE!

On Tuesday 16th June our weekly Horsham Future Forum and Youth Eco Forum attendees listened to an excellent talk by Peter Simpson, Trustee of the Friends of Warnham Local Nature Reserve and Sally Sanderson, Chair of Friends of Horsham Park. Friends of Warnham Local Nature Reserve, Friends of Horsham Park and the Horsham Society have formed Keep Rookwood Green Alliance and are campaigning to retain Rookwood Golf Course as a public green space.

Those of us on this week’s Zoom call were shocked to learn of the ecological damage and the 29% loss of Horsham’s large green space that will occur if 1,100 houses are built on Rookwood Golf Course. The decision will be finalised before August and there is a short window of opportunity in which we can influence Horsham District Councillors. The more of us that make our views known known, the greater the chance that we will be heard and that we can Keep Rookwood Green!

Here are some ways that you can get involved: Read more

Wool & environmentally friendly gardening

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Wool and gardening….. Really? Yup Really!
Fact, wool producers in the UK get paid very little money for wool produced every year. Getting wool from the field to the wool depots is not cost effective. Sheep owners give away the fleeces to shearers, burn them or just allow them to fester in a dark corner which is not environmentally friendly.
Garry (my husband) and I started with 6 Southdown ewe lambs 6 years ago. We now have a flock of 32 sheep. We graze on land in North Horsham. A hobby which has become a passion. Determined not to waste the gorgeous wool that our small flock of sheep produce every year, I researched online and found companies, crafters, art and design colleges to recycle the wool too. I did think about processing our wool for yarn and weaving. It would have cost me thousands of pounds so I went back to the drawing board.
What was simple, environmentally friendly, required little processing, cost effective and made good use of the natural qualities of wool. Wool and gardening!  And so evolved WOOL SHrED.

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Message from Ecuadorian cloud forest

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One of the last hidden treasure/locations

Saturday 9th May the weekly virtual Horsham Climate Cafe focused on The Value of Nature, bringing attendees a special message from Nicola Peel who is locked down in a cloud forest in Los Cedros Biological Reserve in the Choco region of Ecuador full of yet to be discovered plant and animals. Plants which will provide cures to diseases, trees which give us oxygen to breath, things we take for granted. The debate is gold and copper mining for new phones or medicine and oxygen?

During this Climate Cafe session Victoria Wyllie de Echeverria also gave an informal talk about the deep connection indigenous people have to nature, their stewardship of the land and water and how they are adapting to climate change.

You can see Nicola’s video message at the bottom of this page. Learn here about Nicola’s lockdown location, one of the most biologically diverse and endemic habitats on Earth in her latest email:

Dear friends,

After finishing my work in the Ecuadorian Amazon I was about to have a week to myself on the coast. This was not to be. Like so many of us due to the unforeseen events our lives have changed.

I had returned to Quito and was staying with a friend when I heard that due to Corona Virus all borders were closed, flights to be cancelled and no more buses. I got out of the city on the last bus to Chontal and headed up to the Los Cedros Reserve. http://reservaloscedros.org/about/ Read more