Climate friendly fortnight - South West

15–30 September

The South West Wildlife Trusts (SWWT) are declaring September 15-30 as Climate Friendly Fortnight, creating regionwide opportunities to show and share the ways in which the South West is rising to the challenge of climate change.

For the Trusts, it will be a chance to celebrate how they are equipping the region’s wildlife to cope with the different patterns of weather being forecast. But it will also allow groups and individuals across the South West to explain or explore the simple lifestyle changes that could make the future more tolerable, both for wildlife and for people.

We’d be very glad of your involvement.

Our target is for 200 or more events to happen during the two weeks, each inspired by the real and pressing need for us all to think about climate friendly living.

Will you help us to meet our target?

See Ideas for Action to find out what you might do to inform and involve friends, family, social networks, neighbourhoods, colleagues and workplaces, or Contact Us for further suggestions, advice and/or extra copies of leaflets.

To find out what is happening in your area, see your county Trust at South West Wildlife Trusts. Or to check what is happening in Avon, click here for Events

If the climate can change, so can we

SW wildlife & climate change

It’s a fact. Scientists the whole world over now agree: Earth’s climate is changing, and the changes will have far-reaching consequences for people, places, and wildlife, and for the natural clocks, cycles and relationships that underpin life on Earth. Ours included.For wildlife, climate change is double trouble and, when wildlife is in trouble, we are, too. The first challenge is that some species won’t survive weather that is much hotter or more turbulent than now, or be able to cope with extremes of drought or wet.

Second, Nature’s complicated clock may be thrown off-kilter. There’s already evidence that the natural timetable of the South West is altering. What’s more, the shift isn’t uniform. So we may start to see, say, baby birds hatching too early or late for the seeds, grubs or bugs on which they and their parents feed. And that has knock-on effects for other species. Fewer plants and trees, for instance, because their seeds aren’t dispersed, or a flourishing of uneaten pests, causing damage to the habitats and food supplies of other species - ours included.

The Wildlife Trusts of the South West are working hard to help wildlife to adapt to the changes in prospect. In all parts of the region, Wildlife Trust experts are working with others to establish visionary, landscape-scale, conservation projects, that will enable species to retreat from habitats that have become inhospitable and find new havens.

To assist the work, the SWWT has commissioned a discussion document [link to pdf of Gavin’s report] from biodiversity consultant Gavin Saunders, Terrafirma. It explains the possible impacts of climate change on South West biodiversity and suggests how the SWWT and partners might respond.

It’s clear, though, that the priority is to peg average global temperature rises at under 2 degrees C. So now the Trusts are supplementing what they are doing to protect wildlife directly by encouraging people across the South West to make the lifestyle changes that will give the region’s wildlife the best chance of coping.

There’s a role for you. Please visit www.swwt.org.uk/climate to find out what you can do, and how.