Volunteering

Volunteering

Join the Stour Valley Volunteers  and help perserve and enhance this iconic landscape, which inspired artists such as John Constable, Sir Alfred Munnings and Thomas Gainsborough.

The Stour Valley Volunteers (SVV) carry out practical conservation work every other Wednesday. Work is carried out throughout the Stour Valley on nature reserves and private land. The tasks are designed to maintain and improve the environment for wildlife, recreation and landscape quality.

The work is seasonal by nature and a typical year will include:

• Woodland Management: including the ancient arts of coppicing, and layering as well as planting sections of new woodland and hedgerow.
• Grassland Management: cutting and raking valuable areas of ancient grassland to promote wildflowers such as orchids.
• Maintaining Rights of Way: building bridges, steps and boardwalks along the public rights of way that criss cross the Stour valley.
• Promoting biodiversity: by building homes and improving habitat for threatened species such as otters, dormice and barn owls or by maintaining a tree nursery for rare native trees.

Get in involved with the Stour Valley Volunteers  or other ways to get involved.