Survey of the wildlife in gardens (From Gazette Series)

Survey of the wildlife in gardens

GLOUCESTERSHIRE Wildlife Trust is calling on all local garden owners to take part in the first countywide wildlife survey of its kind.

The survey will be conducted over the weekend of May 14-15 and is the first step in finding out exactly what creatures live in Gloucestershire's gardens.

Getting involved is simple - everyone can join in. Twenty species are being focused on from the once common house sparrow, (which national surveys have estimated is in decline by up to 50 percent), to the slow worm, which has never been recorded in Gloucestershire.

"We have plenty of data about wildlife in the countryside, which gives us a good picture of rural Gloucestershire but surprisingly we have nothing about garden wildlife" says Sarah Mason, head of people and wildlife at the Wildlife Trust.

"Private gardens take up approximately 270,000 hectares of land in the UK, this is more land than all of the nature reserves put together so we think gardens could be very important wildlife habitats"

Participants are being asked to record whether they have witnessed the species in their garden using a species photo checklist and what day and time they saw the species.

The survey is published in Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust's membership magazine Wildlife News and is also available to download from the website www.gloucestershirewildlifetrust.co.uk

Results will be published later this year and the data analysed to see where there are gaps in records on the county's wildlife and compare this with national trends. Participants in the survey will be invited to take part in further surveys.