Cae Felin Volunteering and Biodiversity Management Project (BMP).

A new project working in partnership with SBUHB (Swansea Bay University Health Board) to create opportunities for local residents to reconnect with nature and learn new skills through volunteering focused on managing and promoting biodiversity and horticulture. Proactive biodiversity management and constructive protection of natural resources is essential to allow healthy populations to flourish and enrich the environment.

The project will take a field, heavily used for grazing, and transform it into a biodiverse, wildlife friendly green space for the local community to gather, learn new skills and reconnect with their local environment. The local community will be an integral part in planning and development of the site through volunteering days during the week and at weekends to ensure the project is accessible to the whole community.

The LLwchwr Cluster of GP’s whose patients mostly derive from Llangyfelach, Mawr and Pontardulais have agreed to participate in social prescribing (SP) with the project. The Local Area Coordinators (LAC) and community link workers who connect SP opportunities with GP’s are meeting with the project to ensure that this opportunity is open to and visible to patients in the rural wards.

Schools in rural areas will also be given opportunities to participate in a structured education programme aimed at increasing local awareness of biodiversity. This will involve children in the implementation of the BMP and seeing the results. The project will encourage the schools to utilise knowledge and awareness to promote biodiversity at their schools with ongoing support. Llangyfelach Primary provided a letter of support for the project and will promote with other schools in their cluster.

A comprehensive BMP will help deliver more robust, resilient agriculture in the local area due to the multitude of ecosystem services that biodiversity contributes to including our food production, pollination, pest control, preventing soil erosion and flood prevention and improving water quality. Biodiversity provides rich social capital by contributing to a rich, living, breathing countryside which provides crucial links between communities and farmers with open landscapes, thriving hedgerows and woodlands providing another means to engage and encourage rural community cohesion.

Habitat management and ecosystem connectivity will be core within the BMP’s priorities as, without it, biodiversity is either neglected, marginalised, or forced to encroach on the built environment.

Biodiversity provides essential services to the rural community:

• Crop pollination.
• Reducing run off.
• Soil fertility building.
• Erosion prevention.
• Flood prevention.
• Improving water quality.
• Pest Control.
• Windbreaks
• Sustaining rural incomes.
• Variety and therefore adaptability of rural communities.

Management of biodiversity will take place over 6 steps:

• Monitoring
  • 1: Identify Habitats
  • 2: Identify Key Spaces
• Management
  • 3: Manage land sympathetically
  • 4: Pro-active habitat management
• Enhancement
  • 5: Enhance existing habitats/populations
  • 6: Work with others to create new opportunities.