Stealth of a hobbit, not noise of an elephant
A day with Norfolk Rivers Trust volunteers
In the third episode of our series: Farming Social Hub’s Farming with Water, we meet Tim Fisher, who is the Norfolk Rivers Trust Volunteer and Engagement Officer.
Listen to the podcast here.
On the day of the interview, Tim was working with 15 volunteers from multinational insurance giant Aviva to clear a passage of travel for mammals and invertebrates in a riverside woodland.
The project is one of many volunteering opportunities that enables employees of corporate companies to leave their offices for the day and get involved with community projects. Through the initiative, companies such as Aviva, allow employees up to three days a year to give their time to volunteering activities.
NRT provides volunteer and engagement activities through ‘Riverscape East Anglia’, a project supported by Aviva in partnership with WWF-UK. The aim is to work with communities in the UK to build healthier and more resilient ecosystems that help reduce the risk of climate-related natural disasters and create wider benefits for people. You can read more about the partnership here.
For the Norfolk Rivers Trust this is a great chance to get many hands making light work of some of the conservation projects around the county.
On this particular occasion, the volunteers were invited to grab cutting devices, gloves and safety equipment and then delve into the undergrowth to cut a small pathway so that small mammals and invertebrates could make their way through the woodland.
As they were working, the volunteers would catch glimpses of Herons in a nearby Heronry, an amazing amount of farmland and woodland birds were making a cacophony of sound and the green space the volunteers were working within was alive with invertebrates – butterflies, beetles, mayflies and many more.
It is a win-win: the Norfolk Rivers Trust gets vital work done; the volunteers get the chance to leave the office, develop new skills and connect with their colleagues in a new way; nature gets a helping hand.
For Tim, a former teacher, the pleasure clearly comes from showing his team the wonder of nature that is surrounding them. ‘Okay’, he begins as the group enters the woods, ‘this is a real privilege to be stepping into nature like this, so let’s use the stealth of a hobbit, not the noise of an elephant and who knows what we may see. It is magical.’
Hear the full episode here.