Public Awareness
The New Noticeboard

The New Noticeboard

Following the destruction by vandals of the wooden noticeboard at the Butts Road entrance gate, a new one was constructed from steel, and some of the introductory information which appears at the beginning of this Annual Report, together with the new map, has been posted there. This notice can be easily updated from time to time, and there is a writing area on which the time and date of the next meeting of the village Wildlife Conservation Area volunteers is posted.

 

Communications

As the Wildlife Conservation Area becomes progressively more useful for education, more school visits have been organised. The Minutes of the monthly meetings of the Parish Council which are posted on the village notice boards include monthly reports on the progress with the Wildlife Conservation Area. The six-monthly Horspath Parish Council Newsletter, which is delivered free to every household in the village, always carries a short report about the Wildlife Conservation Area, with contact details for new volunteers.

Portable educational photo exhibition. A photographic exhibition illustrating the development of the Horspath Wildlife Conservation Area was mounted as part of the conservation exhibition in March 2002 called "Wildlife on Your Doorstep" organised jointly by Oxford City Council’s Countryside Service and the Oxfordshire Nature Conservation Forum. This exhibition was remounted at meetings of the SODC Area Forum, the Shotover Advisory Group, the Shotover Preservation Society, and other local wildlife conservation meetings.

The core of regular experienced conservation volunteers are routinely contacted by e-mail a few days prior to any volunteer days, with a description of the proposed conservation tasks, and occasionally also with attached graphics files. These e-mailings now also extend to students at Oxford Brookes University who have shown interest in this conservation project.

These web pages have been introduced in 2003 to publicise the Wildlife Conservation Area to a wider audience. They are maintained by Alan Simpson as part of his Shotover website www.shotover.org.uk
(He is still hoping that one day someone will enlighten him as to the species of bat, whose photo appears on the main shotover site at www.shotover.org.uk/bat.htm).


Copyright © Martin Harris & Alan Simpson 2003 Back to the Index Last Updated 2003-03-21