Category Archives: Conservation

Premier Inn At The Pond

Conservation, Volunteering

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Group shot (mainly the Fleet Premier Inn Team)

David Pottinger writes:

On Wednesday 2 October, a large team of volunteers from Premier Inn (PI) took part in a conservation event at the dry heath at Fleet Pond. It was part of a series of team-building activities that were being carried out prior to the opening of the new PI hotel in Fleet on Monday 7 October.

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Collecting birch to take to the fire (a distance away)

The weather was great and a lot of work got done, mainly clearing birch, and was supervised by Rangers as well as members of Fleet Pond Society (some of which are in the photo above).

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PI volunteers hard at work, here cutting a clump of birch

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FPS volunteers starting a fire – smokey work!

A Topsy-Turvy Year For Butterflies At The Pond

Conservation, Education, Plants and Animals

Peter Martin writes:

“The atrocious weather during 2012 was expected to have a disastrous effect on the butterfly population in 2013 and, sure enough, there were so few butterflies around during the spring that I have written about this in an article for the autumn edition of the Fleet Pond Society (FPS) newsletter. A really hot July seemed to reverse the trend, as suddenly there were butterflies everywhere.

A “Butterfly Count” run by “Butterfly Conservation” from 20 July until 11 August showed that 15 of the 21 species listed had actually increased in numbers and 12 of those were up by 50%. The Small White topped the chart with the Large White second, which was surprising bearing in mind how few of them were around during the spring. Numbers of these two butterflies were up 300% compared with the “Butterfly Count” last year.

The biggest surprise for me was to see as many as 18 Small Tortoiseshell butterflies on one day. This particular species was brought almost to extinction by a predator from the continent a few years ago and I only saw 7 in the whole of last year. This year I saw a total of 81.

Details of my butterfly count at Fleet Pond are due to appear in the FPS Autumn Newsletter.”

You can obtain the FPS newsletter by joining the Society – details here.

Peter has written a number of interesting articles on butterflies at the Pond eg please see here (different locations) and here (different species).

There is a general article on UK butterfly numbers for 2013 here.

Colin’s Challenge Trek For Charity – Just A Week To Go!

Conservation, Fund Raising, People, Photography

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A tussle of herons

David Pottinger writes:

Colin Gray, Chairman of Fleet Pond Society, will be taking on the challenge of completing a round trip trek of 21 miles on Sunday 22 September – quite a distance, and just a week to go!

The purpose is to raise funds for the Fleet Pond Clearwater Campaign as well as increasing awareness of local conservation sites and activities.

The very interesting photos above and below were taken by Colin during various preparatory treks. A lot of hard work has already gone into planning and practicing for the challenge, let alone actually doing it!

If you would like to support Colin and Fleet Pond through this charity event, please see here.

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The Aragon Hall Lion

In a previous post, a list of the 12 environmentally important sites that Colin will be visiting on his charity trek  was given. You may not be aware that there are so many such sites in the local area and an interesting way to explore these (in overview) is to use the useful SketchMap site.

Type in GU51 at the top and use the boxes on the lhs to explore the possibilities eg clicking Nature Reserves shows the positions of the different sorts of sites (local nature reserves, SSSI sites etc). A snapshot of some typical results is given below.

SketchMap Fleet Pond

Snapshot from the SketchMap site with local conservation areas highlighted

Full details of the individual areas can be found on their associated sites.

We wish Colin the very best of luck!

Photo credits: Colin Gray

A Busy Start To The New Volunteering Season

Conservation, Volunteering

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It’s not all hard work, there’s also time for a chat and catchup…

David Pottinger writes:

The new volunteering season has now started and with a very busy beginning! Last Sunday, volunteers from Fleet Pond Society (FPS) and others met in the morning to clear alder and scrub, producing a very impressive fire (glimpsed in the picture above).

In the afternoon, the 1st Aldershot Scouts arrived at another part of the Pond to help clear that – as you can see, the rain did not deter them!

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The brave Scouts – the bad weather didn’t deter them!

Then, on the following Monday, volunteers from Dimension Data arrived.

Rachel Jones, who was the Countryside Ranger in charge of the events, says:

“The team at Dimension Data turned up at Fugelmere Marsh regardless of the black sky and rain fall!

A goal was set out on the challenging terrain to clear scrub up to a tree line. In two hours this was accomplished with only a few bits left out. This job was important to help the Countryside service team to manage the rare marsh habitat for wildlife that’s dependant on it.

Thank you to the team for their time out of the office and apologies for the weather :)”

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Volunteers from Dimension Data hard at work

Finally, tomorrow, Friday 13th September, SSE return to complete conservation worked started the previous Friday.

Many thanks to all who contributed, the volunteer work makes a significant difference to the overall state of the nature reserve and is greatly appreciated.

If you or your organisation would like to get involved in such activities, please contact Hart Countryside Services (see here for contact details) or else FPS via:

Colin Gray, 14 Kenilworth Road, Fleet, Hampshire GU51 3DA

Tel: 01252 616183
E-mail: colin.gray@talktalk.net

We look forward to seeing you!

We’re Always Making Improvements!

Conservation, People, Volunteering

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Off to work we go…

David Pottinger writes:

Here’s yet another example of the really useful sort of volunteer work that Fleet Pond Society (FPS) get involved in. The boards on the new and popular dipping platform had a minor defect and needed to be replaced. As you can see from the pictures above and below, everyone got stuck in and the platform is now right as rain.

You can read on this blog the enormous variety of tasks that FPS carry out to the benefit of the local community as well as visitors from further afield.

If you’d like to support our activities, you can do this by joining FPS (which is from a modest £10 a year), please see here for details.

You could also participate in a volunteer event of your choosing, many are held throughout the year and are widely advertised (blog posts, tweets, notice boards etc). We like to think we’re a very sociable bunch and new volunteers are always very welcome! The latest list of Sunday volunteer events can be found in the preceding post (here).

You could also suggest that your company has a volunteer event at the pond. It’s very impressive just how much can be done when a group of enthusiastic people get together!

If you would like further information, please contact Colin Gray, Chairman of FPS, who will be delighted to hear from you:

Colin Gray, 14 Kenilworth Road, Fleet, Hampshire GU51 3DA

Tel: 01252 616183
E-mail: colin.gray@talktalk.net

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Getting down to it…

Photo credits: top (Rachel Jones) and bottom (David Pottinger).