Let’s BE INSPIRED

BELMONT QUARTERLY UPDATE

With Spring on the horizon, it’s time to look back at some of the best bits of Belmont across the last three months to share our quarterly round-up of highlights and the impact that you have helped us achieve.

Recently, we’ve hosted many corporate, charity and community events, launched a new website, released our hero education video, shared our yearly biodiversity reporting numbers and revealed our new BNG product to the market.

NATURE-BASED EDUCATION

2023 came around very quickly, but it did give us a chance to sit and reflect on the total number of children, families and schools that we have been able to reach through the programme.

In total, we are extremely proud that we have been able to help 3000 people to access nature throughout the last year. This includes 600 families and 1500 schoolchildren alongside people from 197 other organisations. To read more about the success of our programme in 2022, visit our ‘yearly roundup’ blog here and watch our hero video here.

During the autumn of last year, we worked with the charity Community of Purpose on their Break Free holiday programme helping to combat holiday hunger. From the 100 children from Community of Purpose, we received some incredible feedback that we are proud to share:

• 98% would come back and visit us again  
• 93% felt the programme helped them learn new skills
• 89% feel the programme made them interested in new things
• 85% feel happier when speaking to other children they do not know
• 81% have made new friends from the programme

BIODIVERSITY NUMBERS

Across the year, we coordinated 652 hours of species monitoring, surveying and habitat management volunteer sessions within our rewilding project. It’s inspiring to see this community-led action of local ecologists and wildlife enthusiasts transform their research into real and tangible numbers.

By the end of 2022, we detected a total of 1,166 new plant and animal species including…

• 🦋 354 moths, butterflies and dragonflies
• 🪲 570 invertebrates
• 🌱 131 plants
• 🦅 79 birds
• 🦇 14 birds
• 🦦 11 mammals
• 🐍 4 reptiles
• 🐟 3 fish and crustacean

Some of the highlights from surveying species within the rewilding project were:

• Overall, the team believe rewilding of the various arable fields has resulted in good feeding opportunities and perhaps breeding for Yellowhammer, Skylark, Linnets, Goldfinch, Reed Bunting, and Chaffinch. A highlight was recording the Spotted Flycatcher species.
• During bat surveys, our team regularly recorded common pipistrelle, soprano pipstrelle, serotine, noctule and mytosis species. A highlight was the first time they saw noctules doing feeding displays over the fields.
• We had excellent results from the camera traps deployed on the estate to spot a variety of mammals. A highlight was recording a mum and two well-grown cub otters swimming under the Watercress bridge.
• The moth, butterfly and dragonfly surveys were extremely successful with some star species being cliften nonpareil, black rustic and autumnal rustic moths.

In other news, our Dartmoor ponies returned to the rewilding project where they’ve been busy driving an extra layer of diversity. Not only do they clip the vegetation with their teeth, but crucially, they also keep the pigs and cows moving around the land, spreading their grazing pressure across the site. To learn more, watch our video on why their co-existence is vital to our project.

OUR NEW PRODUCT – BIODIVERSITY NET GAIN

BNG is an approach to development and land management that aims to leave the natural environment in a measurably better state than before. As a result, BNG aims to put nature at the heart of planning by ensuring development projects not only replace the biodiversity they are taking from the landscape but add a 10% net gain. 

From the biodiversity being produced within our rewilding project at Watercress Farm, we are able to provide BNG units. Over the last year, we have been working very hard to be able to launch our new Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) product. To learn more about what BNG means to Belmont, read our blog here.

We are excited to be hosting a BNG workshop on Tuesday 18th April to speak to businesses wanting to learn more about how they can implement BNG into their developments and how we can support the delivery of BNG offsite within our rewilding project. If you are interested in attending, register here.

WETLANDS PROJECT

VOLUNTEERING & COMMUNITY

Last year, we built a community of 102 registered volunteers that took part in 652 hours of surveying, species monitoring and habitat management. It has been amazing to see both our community and wildlife programmes grow and looking forward to seeing the impact they help us achieve this year. If you are interested in joining our volunteering programme, find out more here.

Recently, we have collaborated with a number of incredible organisations on community and corporate events and guided walks and talks including:

• TLT LLP
• Enviral, Krystal and Good Energy
• The Prince’s Trust
• Frank Water
• The Sustainable Food Trust
• DEFRA and Natural England

Belmont is a place for people and businesses to be inspired by nature and to feel more connected to it and we love to be able to share this with like-minded organisations.

WHAT’s NEXT FOR BELMONT?

We’re looking forward to hosting some exciting events this spring and summer. We also have some big nature recovery news on the horizon so keep your eyes peeled for more updates soon.

Here’s to another impactful three months 👊

Thanks, Team Belmont