by
Melissa Howell
7th April 2025
Our dedicated volunteers give their time and passion to our projects – and we couldn’t do it without them. Thank you!
Chase and Chalke practical volunteers have been busy over the last few months, before bird-nesting season starts, clearing scrub from Martin Down and surrounding downland, helping to protect scarce juniper, learning about the cider-making process and gaining skills in fruit tree pruning at Cranborne Chase Cider Farm. We have more exciting activities coming up working on the Fovant Badges.
Chase and Chalke’s Nurturing Nature volunteers have been participating in an array of specialist wildlife ID online training sessions. There have also been some in-person workshops on species that are found in our amazing local landscape such as dormouse and tricky winter tree ID. There will be field survey sessions available soon to follow up this initial training and put new skills into practice. These sessions have been provided by Species Recovery Trust.
As part of Chase & Chalke’s Wonderful Woodland project, a talk was held focusing on tree pests and tree diseases. This fascinating talk was given by Marcus Reeves, Tree Health Forester from Forestry England. The event was very well attended by local farmers, landowners and volunteers, who learned how climate change is making many pests and diseases more prevalent and how everyone can help to spot symptoms and how this might affect how you manage a woodland.
Our Chase & Chalke Young Rangers were out recently with Ranger Melissa, Catherine, one of our heritage officers and Dom from Species Recovery Trust learning about woodland plant species, especially the fascinating lichens.
Our route checking volunteers attended a walks meeting recently to learn how walk leaflets for the National Landscape are progressing and how they can get involved and help to check routes and report issues. We were also able to provide information about how volunteers can help with this year’s ChalkeEscape Walking Festival.
The Chase & Chalke LiDAR project goes from strength to strength with new amazing discoveries being uncovered each month, including investigations into chalk pits and their uses. The volunteer portal, provided by Rebecca Bennett from Pushing the Sensors, is an amazing wealth of information and learning tool to enable volunteers to explore, and investigate and navigate Cranborne Chase National Landscape, discovering new archaeological sites form their home. It has proved a very popular and insightful project so far.
If you would like to volunteer, take a look at our Volunteering Hub.