6 October 2023

By Darryl Cox, Senior Science & Policy Officer 

On Wednesday 27 September, the latest State of Nature report was released. Alarmingly, it shows that one in six species in the UK are at risk of extinction. For pollinators, the picture is pessimistic – they’ve declined by 18% since 1970. The report boils down to the bad news – nature is in a terrible state, and the good news – we know how to turn it around and we have evidence to show what works. But this is a nature crisis, so we need to get our skates on. 

Cue, Chris Packham, TV presenter and life-long conservationist, turned activist, who in the weeks leading up to State of Nature being published worked with his small team to rally the environmental and wildlife conservation sector to make a stand for nature outside the offices of the UK Government’s Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs. The Restore Nature Now demonstration took place in London on Thursday 28 September, with other smaller protests outside regional offices around the country. Its purpose was to bring people together to speak up for nature and to demand the government takes urgent and meaningful action to restore nature. No more rolling back on the laws that protect nature, no more rolling back on promises to meet our net zero commitments. 

For the first time in the Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s history, we joined forces with the 40+ organisations and hundreds of individuals who gathered to protest in London. It was a legal and peaceful protest, filled with ordinary people who care about what is happening to our natural world, people who have had enough of things not going in the right direction and people who are rightly worried for the future. To be there alongside them, to hear the stories, the hopes, the fears, the demands, and the visions for a better future, was a humbling experience. My colleagues and I spent our time talking to people about the bumblebee manifesto, which aims to highlight the key changes we need to see to get bumblebees and other pollinators thriving again. I also had the honour to take to the stand to speak up for bumblebees and promote a message of hope – if you’re interested, you can catch what I imagine the bumblebees would have liked to have said in the video below.  

At the end of the protest, Chris Packham took to the stand. He applauded the environmental sector for coming together to stand up for nature but warned that more action may be necessary. For those who may be confused by the title of his recent TV programme, he wasn’t talking about breaking the law – no paint, no powder, no glue. He was talking about the legal right to peacefully protest, and the fact nature needs people now more than ever: “Nature doesn’t have a voice, but we do. Nature can’t act, but we must.” 

 If all of that has you feeling worried for the future and angry about the lack of progress to help nature from our governments, you’re not alone. It’s said that action can be one of the best remedies for those experiencing eco-anxiety, especially collective action. Here are four things you can do in this moment to stand up for nature: 

• Read and share the Manifesto for Bumblebees, especially with your elected representatives and local candidates. Be sure to add #BumblebeeManifesto on any social media. 
• Get involved with the Nature Can’t Wait campaign which has toolkits and resources to help you engage with your elected representatives about nature and the urgent actions needed to restore it. 
• Talk to your friends, family, colleagues, classmates, neighbours, bus-drivers, anyone who will listen, about how wonderful and important nature is and how much it needs people to stand up for it, now more than ever.

If you are looking for simple actions to help bumblebees in your green space or community, visit our Bee the Change page for simple, quick mirco actions.

2 November 2023

In partnership with the London Borough of Newham, we have created a Wild Bee Garden to benefit local wild pollinators and the local community. Senior Conservation Officer Bex Cartwright explains how this thriving habitat was created.

Back in January 2023, we were approached by the Parks and Green Spaces team at Newham Council, inviting us to help with the creation of a feature garden to showcase wild bees. The garden was one of four feature areas to be created as part of a wider project to create a pollinator trail along the length of Newham Greenway, a public footpath and cycleway which extends 7km from Victoria Park in Tower Hamlets to Royal London Docks. The Greenway is a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC). We were delighted to be part of the project!

The plot for the wild bee garden is approximately 10 x 10m and started out as an area of rough grass and bramble with few flowers. The plot is connected by grassland and flowering trees and scrub that joins a local community orchard. We wanted to add as many features for wild bees as possible to the garden including nesting habitat alongside abundant sources of pollen and nectar that would provide food for a range of wild bees throughout the year.

The final design and planting includes a native mixed species hedgerow, flowering shrubs such as flowering currant and honeysuckle. A herbaceous border and ‘brownfield’ style planting where drought-tolerant plants have been planted and seeded into recycled, crushed aggregate material. A perennial wildflower meadow area is also in development which complements the meadow species that run the length of the 7km greenway. We have also included specimen trees such as a pussy willow and wildflowers such as primroses to provide spring forage. The aggregate mounds also act as nesting habitat for ground-nesting bees and wooden totems have been installed to provide homes for cavity nesting bees. The hedgerow base, meadow and surrounding grasslands will provide nesting sites for bumblebees.

A wonderful local community artist who is also a London National Park City Ranger designed a series of engaging interpretation panels for the garden which illustrate a range of solitary bees and bumblebees and explain their lifecycles as well as their nesting and feeding needs.

Surveys of the garden have taken place throughout the process and the bees were very quick to start using the new range of resources provided! Exciting sightings include species of bumblebee including the scarce Brown-banded carder bumblebee (Bombus humilis) and solitary bees such as the Black mining bee and Wool carder bee.

The Greenway Pollinator Trail and Wild Bee Garden were generously funded by the Mayor of London’s Rewild London Fund.

Thanks to Anna Yusuf and the Newham Council Parks and Green Spaces Grounds Maintenance team who put in all of the hard work landscaping and planting the garden and invited us to be part of this project. Thanks also to Trust volunteer George for his design and drawing skills, and community artist Matt Ponting for the amazing interpretation work.

You can read more about the Newham Greenway Pollinator Trail Project.

24 November 2023

Written by Hugo Gault

When I started my traineeship at the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in July this year, I was pleased to see that the Trust had several other traineeships currently ongoing and had supported trainee placements in the past: I felt that my placement here was in experienced hands. Now, three months in, I know that assessment was accurate, and as the three-month mark coincided perfectly with the end of the field season, I wanted to take the opportunity to share some of the experiences of myself and other trainees at the Trust.

My trainee placement is through New to Nature – a programme offering employment mentorship and paid experience in new, full-time, year-long work placements in the environmental sector, with the aim of attracting diverse talent from communities currently underrepresented in environmental roles. And “new to nature” I certainly am! I have come into this work with no experience or education in the green/environmental sector, excepting some volunteering at my local waste reduction initiative. Aydan Khan, a fellow New to Nature placement at the Trust, started with the programme a few months before me, having come from working in the green infrastructure sector, where he built green roofs in Brighton and London. He tells me that after achieving a degree in biology, he had a keen interest in wildlife conservation. Once deciding that construction wasn’t for him, he left that sector and landed what he refers to as his best job yet: being a Bee Connected trainee at the Trust.

Aydan works in practical conservation, through the Bee Connected project, a landscape scale restoration ecology project, which aims to improve and create habitats for bumblebees with a focus on four of the UK’s rarest species, the Brown-banded carder bumblebee, Moss carder bumblebee, Red-shanked bumblebee and the Ruderal bumblebee. His role as a trainee involves bumblebee surveying, wildflower surveys, public outreach, and volunteer engagement and recruitment.

New to Nature is not the only programme supporting trainee placement roles. Heather Borland works as an ecologist and tour guide for Highland Titles – a family business that runs nature reserves by selling “souvenir” plots of land. Highland Titles is working collaboratively with the Trust, and this summer, Heather started a placement with us on our Great Yellow Bumblebee: On the Verge project in Caithness, where she has been surveying road verges for flowering plant diversity and density.

I am based at the Trust’s Stirling office, and I have two roles. I split my weeks between being a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) assistant and supporting the running of BeeWalk, our citizen science biological recording project. Overall, my work involves a lot of data handling, monitoring, and visualisation, and I have also been doing some work to improve BeeWalk’s volunteer resources. Being GIS trainee has allowed me to engage with scientific recording across a range of the Trust’s projects, allowing me to have insight into the Trust’s conservation work on a broad scale. Like me, Emma Bungay, another trainee has a more desk-based role, working on the Bee Inspired – Walsall project, which aims to provide volunteering opportunities to engage people with nature and bumblebees. The project works to accommodate access to nature for a diverse community by engaging with people in deprived areas. Emma tells me that the practical experience she gained while achieving a Level 2 Diploma in Work-based Environmental Conservation, through a traineeship with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, really helped to prepare her for a more community facing role at the Trust. 

Traineeships are rich learning opportunities, and I have already gained a wealth of knowledge: almost everything I’m doing is new, so I’m learning all the time! I’ve been supported in my development by highly knowledgeable staff to make a lot of progress with learning about bumblebee identification and ecology, how to use mapping software, and scientific data handling, none of which I had done before I started in this role. Currently, I am also branching out into some communication and engagement elements within my role. Aydan tells me, “This traineeship has given me the opportunity to develop my confidence and self-esteem within the workplace. It’s provided a safe environment to explore, experiment, make mistakes, and most importantly learn and grow. Working closely with some of the top bumblebee experts in the UK has provided quality insight; I have learnt bumblebee identification skills, pollinator ecology, wildflower meadow restoration amongst all that goes into public engagement and managing volunteers.” Heather shares that her placement enabled her to explore a part of Scotland that’s new to her, as well as teaching her a lot about identifying different plant and bumblebee species. 

I hope it’s evident that we are all really enjoying our placements with the Trust. A highlight for me is getting to reconnect with science after some time of having my work and education more focused on humanities. Connecting to nature through work has been hugely positive for me, I find joy in all the new things I am learning about bumblebees. I am working with a great team of people and being able to learn from them makes me exited to come into work every day. Heather tells me, “Being able to do something a bit different is always valuable and has brought me extra confidence in my abilities to conduct surveys and work alone out in the field safely. The best part was finally seeing a Great Yellow bumblebee which I saw 14 of in one day!!” Emma adds, “I’m really enjoying my experience with the Trust, everyone is so welcoming and it’s a lovely community to be a part of!” Aydan shares that the entire year has been invaluable, but if he had to pinpoint one highlight, “It would be the incredible and dedicated community I had the privilege to work with, all united by our shared goal of protecting and conserving bumblebees. I can’t remember a day at work when I wasn’t smiling.”

As I still have some time before the end of my traineeship, I was curious to ask my fellow trainees what possibilities their roles have opened to them for the future. Aydan answers that his traineeship has given him the skill set to apply and follow a career in ecology and the conservation sector. There’s the possibility of continuing his employment with the Trust, but he also feels confident in finding work with other charity NGOs within the UK. Similarly, Heather tells me “I’m nearing the end of my placement and although there’s nothing new on the horizon yet, I’m confident this training will bring new opportunities for me in the future, and I can’t wait!”

Being able to do a traineeship with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust is something I am very fortunate to be able to experience. I have found that even though we have a staff team that spreads from the Outer Hebrides to Cornwall, everyone – across levels and different teams – has readily welcomed me. Though I don’t currently know what I’ll end up doing when my traineeship ends, I will be glad to have spent this time as part of the team here, working towards conserving bumblebees.