THE Warrington Nature Conservation Forum (WNCF) met at the Fiddlers Ferry Power Station Educational Resource Centre on December 2.

The centre is a great resource centre used by many schools in Warrington and Widnes and thanks go to Gemma for hosting the event.

Our speaker was Jenny Griggs, community engagement officer of the Lancashire Wildlife Trust (LWT). She gave a brilliant talk on The Carbon Landscape Project.

Her talk was followed by a lengthy exchange of interesting questions with the WNCF members passing on to Jenny a list of partner’s details and what they could offer.

One of the outcomes for the Carbon Project is to link up the mosses and coalfields of parts of Manchester and Warrington.

They will be attempting to map for visitors a wildlife corridor with a 26-mile central spine and involve volunteer groups and individuals over the next five years.

The chair pointed out that the WNCF expressed a view to link up wildlife sites as part of the Warrington Local Plan developing the ideas of Hugh Warwick in his book Linescapes.

Jenny said: “The LWT have estimated that there are over 100,000 people within 10 minutes walking distance of the Carbon Project or half of Warrington Town’s population.

The treasurer (Brian Martin of Woolston Eyes) and chair Geoff Settle reported that two years after Warrington Borough Council divorced itself from the WNCF the forum had a bit of money in the bank and a developing media base on which to go forward. The treasurer had found a venue for the quarterly WNCF meeting in exchange for him doing their gardening.

With a membership of almost 550 Likes one issue is to translate that into bums on seats at meetings so that more can find out about the great nature conservation work going on in the town by the many wildlife groups can be further highlighted.

There are very enthusiastic nature loves in Warrington and they are beavering away quietly in small groups actively trying to conserve what we have.

We were set up by WBC following the World Rio conference in the 1990s to act as a voice for Warrington and shout about nature conservation and biological diversity.

Hence our 11 pages of evidence to the Local Plan and the Western Link.

So, maybe we are not shouting and writing in vain, hopefully are views and are being read and considered. We will continue to be a conduit, but people should remember that we are all volunteers with limited resources (time and money) so the more people that we can get involved the better chance we can have of raising awareness.

GEOFF SETTLE Chair Nature Conservation Forum