As the Natural Heritage Project Officer, I have the privilege of running lots of regular volunteering sessions and helping our wildlife monitoring volunteers. This is a really varied, fun, and sometimes challenging part of my role. Over the last 3 years we have developed a really amazing group of regular volunteers who work hard twice a month to look after Lake View Park. Together we have taken an unloved area of urban woodland that’s almost 5 hectares, and worked to improve the space for wildlife and people. Seeing the confidence and skill of the volunteers grow as we have worked together has been a pleasure, and the sessions with the group are a highlight of my week.

It can be really humbling to see the care and dedication of local people and the investment they are willing to put into making their local green spaces better for wildlife. We now regularly see species such as woodpecker, bullfinch, fox and muntjac deer using the space and I am looking forward to seeing how many more species we can record as we continue the project. On a wider scale, our wildlife monitoring volunteers go around the River Sherbourne and record the wildlife that calls Coventry home. I work to support these volunteers with training, equipment, and when I can, I love to join them in the field admiring the amazing wildlife that they are recording. We currently monitor butterflies, birds and aquatic invertebrates – the data that we generate helps us to better understand the ecology of Coventry and how we can all work to support nature recovery in the city.