Rolls-Royce fuels the future for bushcraft

With our saws sharpened, the marshmallows ready to toast and a sunny day of hard work ahead, we met our team of enthusiastic volunteers from Rolls-Royce plc who joined us to help with some essential improvements to our bushcraft site.

With over 3000 students visiting our Folly Farm education centre each year and bushcraft one of our most popular day and residential visits, we really needed to expand our sites and get them ready for a full year ahead.  The Rolls-Royce team had got in touch and offered their team as volunteers to help us out 



The team got stuck right in and soon had a parachute canopy up in the trees that will provide shelter on particularly rainy days keeping us lighting fires whatever the weather.  

Two fantastic log stores were built with the addition of a clever water collecting system so that we had plenty of rainwater to put out our fires in the future and plenty of space for logs to fuel our fires.



A team of tree fellers were busy felling trees as part of our winter management plan, making sure to use every part of the tree with logs stacked in our new log stores and smaller branches left for the children to make shelters.  

After all that hard work and with the sites looking so great we all had a chance to test our own survival skills by lighting fires with fire steels and cooking Bannock bread over the fire and toast those marshmallows.

What better way to test out our new sites than with 44 children from Stonham Aspal primary school who were staying at the centre all week for their school residential.  With so many fresh branches around, the shelters were some of the best we've seen and as one boy put it "I wish I could live in here for the rest of the week".

With our new hand washing stations and outdoors kitchens the children learnt how to make their own bread and cook it over their fires, which roared with all the fresh wood that had been collected for them.  

A huge thank you to the team at Rolls-Royce, we can't wait to welcome more groups to our fantastic bushcraft site and get more children outdoors and engaged with nature.

Jo Taylor, Learning Development Manager

And the winners are ....

Last night, at our glitzy award ceremony, CBBC's Naomi Wilkinson presented the first ever Mini Panda Awards sponsored by BBC Earth to the winners of Avon Wildlife Trust's 'Wild Schools Film Challenge' supported by Rolls-Royce plc.  With over 50 films entered into this years competition a team of judges watched all of the films and selected the five finalists who were invited to our award ceremony.

High Down Juniors Winners Key Stage 2

Not only did the children get to watch each others films and find out who the lucky winners were but they also got to hear about some of the adventures Naomi has had meeting wildlife from all around the world and some of the exciting filming Bertie Gregory, a local wildlife photographer and filmmaker who is himself up for a international Panda awards, has done.  Bertie amused the audience with wild stories and noises of British wildlife and gave all the young wildlife filmmakers his top tips saying, “ you don’t have to go far to find great wildlife. The most important thing you can do is take time to learn about nature and spend lots of time outdoors.”

Trinity Primary School Runner Ups Key Stage 2

The winners in the older age group were children from High Down Juniors (Portishead), who used puppets to tell the story of their local nature reserve, Portbury Wharf, and its wildlife. Runners up were Trinity Primary School (Portishead) whose film 'operation nature' explored wildlife in winter and even managed to film some amazing footage of a swan.

Staple Hill Primary Winner Key Stage 1

Winners in the younger category were from Staple Hill Primary (Bristol) who put the waterproof cameras to the test by filming tadpoles under water in their school pond.  

Oasis Academy New Oak Runner Ups Key Stage 1

Runner Ups for this age group were Oasis Academy New Oak (Bristol) who did a fantastic job of exploring their school grounds looking for habitats and wildlife, including a big black spider and lots of daisies.  

May Park Primary School OVERALL WINNERS 

A special Gold Mini Panda for the overall winner was presented to children from May Park Primary (Eastville, Bristol) for their inspired film ‘A day in the Woods’ commended for its excellent narration and filmmaking.  The children also won a free two day, one night residential for their whole class to our Folly Farm education centre and were particularly looking forward to going to school the next morning to share with their school their winning news and prizes. 

Harry, aged 8, who took part in the Wild Schools Film Challenge says, "It was so fun because we got to look at animals whilst learning and getting fresh air.  The best lessons ever!"

Naomi Wilkinson, presenter of CBBC's Naomi's Nightmares of Nature says, "The Wild Schools Film Challenge is a great way for children to get outside and learn about the nature right on their doorsteps. All the films deserve a Mini Panda Award in my book!"

For everyone at Avon Wildlife Trust it was a very exciting and proud night as we watched the children collect their awards for the amazing films they entered into the competition.  To view all of the films please visit youtube.com/avonwildlifetrust

The competition for next year has already started so if you would like to book out a kit box, free of charge, for your class please visit www.avonwildlifetrust.org.uk/wildschools

Jo Taylor, Learning Development Manager for Avon Wildlife Trust 

And they're off! We wave goodbye and good luck to our elvers

This week has been quite a week with an emotional farewell to our elvers that we have been rearing since April.  Over the last 4 months our little office friends have tripled in size since they first arrived as glass eels and had changed into elvers.  






Not only have these adorable elvers helped us learn how to look after eels to be able to share the information with schools who took part in our Spawn to be Wild project with Bristol Water, but they were also the celebrities in our marquee for the Festival of Nature. Thousands of people visited our marquee over the weekend along with 200 school children all keen to learn more about their fascinating lives and what we can do to help them and make sure that we keep them far away from extinction.

Learning development Manager Jo Taylor releases our elvers 

So it was only right that they got a proper send off as they start the next exciting part of their journey.  We took them down to Blagdon lake where so far we have released over 2500 elvers with the Spawn to be Wild schools project.  Making sure that there weren't any hungry ducks around we slowly released them into the lake where they will live until they are adults (between 6 and 20 years).  Once they reach maturity they then begin the amazing journey all the way back to the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic to breed.  

We've really got to know the personalities of the eels in the last couple of months so it was a real honour to be able to release them and watch them on a clear and sunny day head to the lake bed exploring the weeds and rocks.
Lets hope that one of these eels beats the record of 88 years old and that as many of them as possible head back to the Sargasso Sea to breed and many more glass eels will travel up our rivers in future years.

Hungry Caterpillar at Folly Farm

We've just watched a wonderful video from Knowle Park Primary school all about their fantastic day at Folly Farm.  

Take a look at what they have been up to by visiting their blog 

Knowle Park Primary Blog

Wrington Pupils wave goodbye to their elvers

Our final release of the year before half term was a very exciting one with the children from Wrington Primary School having a fantastic time at Blagdon Lake.

The first thing to do was to head over to the eel pass at the Bristol Water Fisheries site and check whether there were any elvers waiting in the tank to be released up into the lake.  This time we not only had these elvers which had made their way up the River Yeo and through the eel pass brushes to get into the tank, but also hundreds of glass eels and elvers which had been transferred there a few days before from UK Glass Eels.

These elvers were due for release into the wild and who better to do this than the wonderful guardians of our glass eels in Somerset - the Year 6 class at Wrington Primary.  So all the children had a go at catching the elvers in the tank - ready to be taken up to Blagdon Lake.  This was no easy task as of course, eels are slippery customers - the saying "As slippery as an eel" exists for a good reason!  However, the children were fantastic - very careful and gentle and we managed to capture every single one.

Trying some sustainable smoked eel 

After an enthusiastic nature trail in the woodland reserve at Bristol Water Fisheries, we headed back to the lake for some lunch and to try smoked eel - a first for all the children.

It was then time for the big release with our elvers of all different sizes from the eel pass as well as their own special glass eels, which they had looked after so carefully all last term. 

It is amazing how fond you can become of your little eel charges!

Good luck little elvers!

After saying 'goodbye' to all our elvers and glass eels and wishing them a long and happy maturity into adulthood in Blagdon Lake, the children had a wonderful bird watching session on the lake.  Our highlight was seeing families of ducks and coots with their babies bobbing in and out of the rushes.

The children at Wrington did a wonderful job of looking after their glass eels and we are very grateful to them for helping us with this wonderful conservation project aimed at increasing the population of eels in our freshwater in Somerset.  What a lovely thought for the children that they might come back in 20 years' time and their eels could still be living in Blagdon Lake before heading all the way back to their spawning grounds in the Sargasso Sea!

Wildlife in action

On a magical, sunny day at Blagdon Lake, 1500 elvers (young eels) were released by the Year 5s from Yatton Junior School, ready to start the next stage of their amazing lives in the reservoir.  Blagdon Lake isn't just home to thousands of elvers though... the children also saw nesting coots, mute swans, mallards, cormorants and the many gulls that make a home there.  In the woodland near the pumping station they also saw badger setts, an otter holt (and got to see and smell otter poo!); they waded through the long grasses and flowers of the meadow to a copse where blue tits nest and bats roost.  And talking of bats, they also stopped to look at the old pump house which has been converted into a bat cave.  The lake provides an amazing habitat for such a wide range of plants and animals and seeing all this wildlife 'in action' allowed the children to  understand more fully the food chains and webs that are part and parcel of such a wildlife rich environment.

St Andrews eel release

On Friday year 5 and 6 at St Andrews finally got to release their elvers into the wild at Blagdon Lake where we hope they will be spending the next 5 to 25 years maturing into fully grown adults.  Then at some point they will be following their instinct to take them back across the Atlantic Ocean, all the way to the Sargasso Sea to spawn.

The children not only released the elvers they had been looking after since the beginning of term but also another 2000 (!) ready to start the road to adult life in Blagdon Lake.

 On a beautiful sunny day the children walked across the dam at the bottom of Blagdon Lake and visited the eel pass on the Bristol Water fisheries site. Here the elvers make their way up a special brush system and end up in a bird proof tank. Every morning they are netted and released up into the lake.  Without the eel pass they would not be able to get past the water works that Bristol Water use at the fisheries and therefore would not be able to mature into adults in an ideal habitat such as Blagdon Lake.

The eel pass at Bristol Water fisheries is just one of many devices functioning throughout the UK in an attempt to help elvers and young eels overcome many of the flood defences and other obstacles they find during their journey upstream in rivers and streams.

After finding 2 elvers waiting in the eel pass tank for release the children took part in a nature trail which also taught about several native riverside mammals such as the otter and water vole.

Finally it was back across to the lake to try some smoked eel.  Part of the conservation effort with this species is to make it also commercially viable in the UK and throughout Europe.

All in all, a lovely day was had by all and we would like to thank St Andrews for doing such a brilliant job in helping us to conserve eels in Somerset!