Recording Nature – Surrey Wildlife Trust Wildlife Recording Kits

Surrey Wildlife Trust are offering 'Wildlife Recording Kits' - boxes filled with surveying equipment to help community groups undertake species monitoring on sites from gardens and churchyards, local green spaces, and woodlands.  The kits are available to borrow (free of charge) from the Trust’s head office in Pirbright, from What Next? (Godalming Library of Things), or ZERO Carbon (Guildford Library of Things).  Surrey Wildlife Trust's Wildlife Recording Kits can be reserved for one or two weeks at a time.
With one-third of our local species in trouble, Surrey Wildlife Trust are on a mission to encourage more people to take action to protect and provide homes for native plants and animals.  Their kits can help you identify what wildlife live and grow in your area, from mini beasts to plants, to small mammals.  The results will enable community groups to make informed land management decisions that benefit nature.  After surveying your area you may opt to put up signage to encourage people not to walk on wildflowers, instal bird feeders filled with suitable food for a particular species, instal bat boxes, plant hedgerows to support butterflies and moths, or create ponds for newts.

The following kits are available:

• Bat kit including high-viz jackets for working at night, a bat detector and call frequency guide.
• Pond kit including nets, trays for specimens and identification guides for a range of species.
• Minibeasts kit including magnifying pots, equipment for handling specimens and ID guides.
• Small mammals kit including footprint tunnels and plates, feeding kit and ‘tracks and signs’ ID guide.
• Soil kit with a corer and tester kit to establish soil chemistry.
• Plant kit including quadrats, magnifiers and ID guides for a huge range of local native flora.
• A trail camera kit is also available. This can be set up to record badgers, foxes, hedgehogs, birds, mice and other creatures that might visit when you are not present.

Once people have completed their surveys, the Trust is encouraging users to report their findings to the Surrey Biodiversity Information Centre (SBIC) to help it gain important information on the distribution and abundance of species and habitats across the county.

If you're interested in becoming a member of Surrey Wildlife Trust, you can join online on their website, here's a link.

​Visit Surrey Wildlife Trust's website to find out more about the equipment they have available.
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Editor
This is such a good idea that perhaps our biodiversity initiative  should consider purchasing equipment or toolkits to help the 4B communities with their own biodiversity projects.