It's been a busy few months of volunteering on our nature reserves throughout the autumn and early winter! 

In the East of the county, our practical conservation volunteers have been busy with a range of tasks including scrub clearance, woodland ride management, spillway clearance, deer protection fencing and pond clearance. We had our first session of woodland ride management in Graeme Hendry Wood in November. This was a fantastic start to an ongoing project. Starting this woodland management project by clearing rides is an important step as they will act as wildlife highways; wildlife can move freely along these woodland highways with the 'service stops' of coppice coupes and glades along their way, which will be the next stages of the project.

Huge progress has been made at Quarry Hangers, Coneyboro Hill, Hill Park, Newdigate Brickworks and Harholt Plantation. With 20 sessions across this quarter on these 5 sites alone, our volunteers have done an amazing job of opening up sections of chalk grassland, a wildflower bank and woodland glade that had all been taken over by copious amounts of scrub. These areas, now open to a lot more light, should see a wider range of wildflower species growing in them over the spring and summer months; important progress for biodiversity!

At Vann Lake, volunteers have been taking down deer protection fencing around one of the coppice blocks in the woodland in preparation for winter coppicing. They also helped with spillway clearance tasks to ensure they are in safe and working condition.

On the other side of the county in the West, our volunteers have been busy primarily at Chobham Common, Wisley and Ockham Common, Royal and Bagmoor Common. Across these sites between September - November 2025 our volunteers have contributed a total of 2,086 hours over 31 volunteer sessions.

At Bagmoor, our volunteers have been tackling silver birch and pine with a combination of tree popping and cutting. They have spent approximately 420 volunteer hours on this over 8 sessions! This now means we're able to replace the broken owl box that we were working near, in the hopes of the owl returning to its nice, new home. Over at Chobham our volunteers have also been popping silver birch and cutting pine, having successfully pushed back a large area over about 500 hours on that section alone over 7 sessions. This scrub clearance work is vital to maintain our rare and biodiverse heathland habitats.

The marsh gentian is a rare plant of acidic bogs and wet heathlands, found in just three areas of England. Earlier this year, our volunteers helped us carry out our annual surveys to monitor their populations at Chobham Common. We have since been in contact with the Millenium Seed Bank who have confirmed we have a fantastic population in that area. We have successfully collected seed from the population and are working towards a reintroduction on Whitmoor Common and other sections of Chobham. Watch this space for updates! A huge thank you to our volunteers for their contributions to this exciting project so far.

At our Central sites, our volunteers have been busy at a range of sites including Norbury Park, Thorpe Hay Meadows, The Forest, Cucknell's Wood, Horsley Meadows, Pewley Meadows and Wallis Wood. Tasks have included scrub clearance, coppicing, dead hedging, deer fencing and installing infrastructure. 

A major effort from volunteers, work experience students and Wild Work Day over the summer and autumn months has resulted in a fabulous new boardwalk at Cucknell's Wood which was completed in November, stretching approximately 30 meters and improving the accessibility of this beautiful woodland site for the community to enjoy.

We'd like to say a special thanks to a couple of volunteers who have made kind donations of equipment to us. One of our volunteers, Alison, generously donated some beautiful water-resistant seat pads for use by volunteers at practical conservation sessions, giving them a comfier spot to sit and enjoy lunch! Another volunteer, Martin, has made fixed point photography posts to put out on a number of West and Central reserves. There are currently three in situ at Pewley Meadows and a further three now at Horsley Meadows. These fixed point photography posts will help us see how our wonderful sites are changing over time to help us measure our impact on nature recovery.

After sadly saying goodbye to a couple of our Reserves Officers earlier this year who took on new roles at other Wildlife Trusts, this quarter we welcomed some lovely new faces to the Reserves Team who will be working with volunteers on our reserves. Ellie Benjamin joins us as a Reserves Officer in the Central team, Ellie Stradling joins us as Senior Reserves Officer, looking after our SANGs across the county, and Justin Bonnet joins us as Nature Restoration Trainee. We're also pleased to congratulate Abi Harrington, who completed our Nature Restoration Traineeship last year, for securing a position with us as Reserves Officer in the West. 

We wrap up the year with our festive volunteer days, one in each area of the county. Last week we held festive sessions at Norbury Park and Ockham Common, celebrating with a guided walk, Christmas treats and of course a scrub clearance task (with volunteers fashioning their Santa hats)! On Friday 19th December we bring 2025 to a close with our last festive session at Newdigate Brickworks.

Thank you so much to all our volunteers across the county for all their hard work and dedication throughout the year, come rain or shine. We look forward to making more impact on nature recovery together in the New Year!