In early March the Mersey Gateway Environmental Trust took on two new student interns…
This is us…
Hi, we’re Rachel and Millie. We are two third year Liverpool John Moores students studying Wildlife Conservation BSc. We jumped at the opportunity to work with the Trust during our placement year – we are delighted to be involved with such a ground-breaking project. As our first two months at the Trust are drawing to a close, we’re taking a step back to reflect on the projects and activities that we’ve been involved with so far.
Our main project here at the MGET has been helping the team to restart cattle grazing on areas of salt marsh across the Upper Mersey Estuary. This has been done in the past, but never on such a large scale, covering this number of sites. So far we’ve been involved in every step of the process, from writing up the grazing plan and risk assessment, to meeting up with potential graziers. It also meant we spent a great deal of time looking at some very cute pictures of cows and calves, which is as every bit as enjoyable as it sounds.
Some of the locations are still construction sites, so we’ve spent a lot of time dressed up in high vis gear (a first for us), which has been very exciting!
We’ve also turned our hands to Willow tit surveys at Gateworth and Moore Nature Reserve using recordings to attract these territorial little birds. We have started turning survey data into easily understandable and visually attractive figures and videos, so that hopefully by the end of our placement we’ll have some great data that we can show off to the public. Hopefully this will demonstrate all the exciting things happening in the Mersey, both as a habitat, and the success of individual species.
We’ve given the social media pages a new lease of life, spreading the environmental story and letting everyone know what the Trust has been up to, be sure to check us out on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Recently we set about planning guided walks on Spike Island in a partnership with the Catalyst Centre. You might see us around once the walks are up and running, and we’d love you to come along! Additionally the Trust has just invested in some exciting new technology in the form of a VR headset which will give a birds-eye view flight around the upper Mersey estuary. We’ll be taking it along to the Catalyst Centre to be part of the guided walks, so you may get a go if you come along!
We’ll be getting up to plenty of exciting things over the next few months, so make sure you’re keeping an eye on our blogs and social media to see what projects we undertake through the summer season.