Surrey Wildlife is asking people to ‘choose the wild life’ this Christmas by backing a new fundraising drive to help rewet, restore and rewild wetland habitats.  

All donations to the £30,000 winter appeal will help the Trust create healthier, greener and wilder wetlands that make our county more resilient against fire and flood and restore the conditions hundreds of species need to thrive. It’s all part of our £1m Save Surrey’s Nature appeal, designed to kickstart the big changes that are now needed to restore natural processes and make life better for people too. 

From rivers and ponds to wet woods, grassland and heathland, waterbodies of all kinds are vital for Surrey’s wildlife and for the health of our landscapes. But this summer’s drought had a serious effect on habitats, with many ponds on SWT reserves drying up completely and fires breaking out across heathland areas.  The increasing threat of winter floods as the climate becomes more extreme also demands urgent action to increase Surrey’s landscapes’ ability to hold back water. 

Surrey Wildlife Trust’s Chief Executive Officer Sarah Jane Chimbwandira says: 

“This summer’s terrible drought brought water levels to a point none of us have experienced in our lifetimes, with 60-plus days without rain pushing wildlife and habitats to breaking point. This could be just the beginning – and it’s our duty to act now.  

“To secure our quality of life, our economy and our precious wildlife, we must build climate resilience into Surrey’s landscapes. From rewetting areas of heathland to making riverbanks more secure against erosion we’ll make our wetlands part of the fightback - acting as firebreaks, cooling the wider landscape, filtering out pollutants and providing habitable spaces for all life.”     

The Trust is also working to bring back species that act as ecosystem engineers – creating more wildlife-friendly ponds, marshes and riverbanks, and helping hundreds of other species, including frogs, newts, fish, dragonflies, Grass Snakes, Kingfishers and potentially Otters, to thrive across our county.  

This September, 30 Water Voles were released at the Trust’s Thundry Meadows nature reserve, part of a wider project led by National Trust to restore these endearing rodents – whose grazing and burrowing greatly improve bankside biodiversity - throughout the River Wey.  And the Trust hopes that Eurasian Beavers will eventually be released into selected sites across the county, helping enrich habitats on a much bigger scale and making a potentially enormous contribution to flood, drought and fire resilience. 

The Wilder Wetlands wish-list 

Every donation, no matter how small, will make a difference.  Here’s what donors’ money could do: 

• £60 pays for a pair of chest waders to help our volunteers clear up a wetland habitat.  
• £200 pays for a lab test to check the impact of runoff from roads.   
• £500 funds a day's work on a Wetlands Inventory, helping the Trust’s ecologists map Surrey's key wetland sites and what lives there so wildlife can be protected more effectively.  
• £1,000 supports a volunteering session clearing overgrown bankside vegetation and helping light reach life-giving aquatic plants. 
• £3,000 funds the creation of a berm to slow the flow of a watercourse, reduce flood risk downstream and create perfect spawning conditions for fish and invertebrates. 

As part of the national federation of 46 Wildlife Trusts’ Fix Water campaign, Surrey Wildlife Trust is also backing calls for more local control and ownership of water companies, so that local environmental issues like pollution and excessive discharges are taken seriously, and tackled as a priority.  This is part of a wider drive to deliver river catchments to health by 2040.