As part of the wider Living Landscapes project to reconnect the Bernwood, Otmoor & Ray area, BBOWT and Wild Oxfordshire have been working in partnership on a project funded by Natural England to focus on the community living in this important landscape.  

Bernwood Forest, the River Ray, and the Otmoor Basin are key environmental features of the broader Living Landscape project that formally began in March 2022. We believe that protecting and restoring this beautiful landscape should be undertaken by conservation organisations alongside the communities who call this place home.

From this starting point, the ‘Reconnecting communities in the Bernwood, Otmoor & Ray’ project was born. We started this phase of scoping in January of 2023, with the aim of talking to the local inhabitants of the area and learning how they want to be involved in the project. This initial process was a positive beginning; we made some new connections with groups in the area, as well as renewing our more established relationships.

Through several events we were able to garner interest in the project and get invaluable feedback from the community. We wanted to find out what communities in the area thought about their landscape, what they were already doing for nature in their area, and how we could support them. Where there wasn’t already wildlife work taking place, our project aimed to scope the local area for people interested in caring for their patch and provide advice on how we could help them encourage others to do the same.

A huge take-away for us during this process has been that the community living in this landscape recognises that the Bernwood, Otmoor & Ray area is special and unique. The mosaic of habitats that thread through the landscape allow for an abundance of wonderful wildlife to flourish in the area, and the local people are already doing so much to protect that.

Learning what people were already up to locally was very inspiring. A wide variety of work for wildlife is taking place!

• Individuals are involved with hedge monitoring and restoration, reducing mowing and letting verges grow long and wild, sowing wild flowers, rewilding their private gardens, putting up swift boxes and doing bird walks & creating ponds
• We learned of a very well-established community orchard, which the community are now looking to enhance for nature
• Churchyards in the area are doing butterfly surveys to monitor their populations
• Farmers have been putting ponds into their fields, managing their hedgerows sensitively, turning some of their pastureland into species-rich meadows
• Schools have been getting involved with planting up verges, creating nature information ‘hubs’ such as the bus stop in Marsh Gibbon situated outside the forest school

Throughout all our communications with these people, an important common theme emerged. There is a deep recognition of the need for greater habitat connectivity, and the desire to help achieve that was evident in those we spoke to. There is an understanding that we need to go beyond simply creating green corridors in the greater countryside, but also to join up the landscape through people's own gardens, and through other public institutions such as schools and churchyards.

At the project workshops, individuals were asked what they wanted to see in the area, both within the landscape and in terms of community action. They were then asked what they felt they needed, in the ideal world – money no object – to achieve these ambitions. The answers were clear;

• they felt they needed a facilitator to drive and coordinate projects,
• expert advice on habitat management,
• more feet on the ground in the form of willing volunteers,
• and guidance on making connections with local authorities.

None of these things sound surprising, unattainable or unrealistic.

In fact, these themes have been echoed by community groups across the three counties and inspired the creation of BBOWT’s Community Network. The aim is to create a long-term legacy that goes beyond our finite project work, holding space for networking and connection between the groups in the three counties.

To join our Community Network, please visit our dedicated web page.

Wild Oxfordshire has known the importance of joined up action and the power of community groups since the first perception of the Oxfordshire Nature Conservation Forum 30 years ago.

Now, with over 20 years of supporting and working with local environmental community groups, they are proud to continue to support the inspirational community work happening across the County. They have given onsite advice to over 50 groups and mapped 100 environmental community groups, all of whom are giving their time and resources to help our planet recover.

Wild Oxfordshire help community groups by providing habitat management advice, directing environmental community groups to funding pots or specialist guidance, connecting groups and organisations, and generally offer support and encouragement. To learn more about what Wild Oxfordshire do, please visit their website.

It’s clear that groups across the area are already doing amazing work, and with the right support from organisations such as Wild Oxfordshire and BBOWT, even more great action for nature can take place. This is why we feel so galvanised by the response from communities in the Bernwood, Otmoor & Ray, and believe there is a need to continue connecting with groups across the area.

To continue to inspire and support the people we connected with during the BOR project, we (the BOR team) compiled an ‘action pack’ of resources focussing on helping the special wildlife of the Bernwood, Otmoor & Ray area, with a particular focus on butterflies and hedgerows. Connections were formed organically through the community meeting one another at our workshop events held in March, and we hope further connections will continue to be formed. To showcase the actions taking place across the area, we created a map of where the activities and groups are located.

The evidence gained in this project will feed into the wider Reconnecting the Bernwood, Otmoor and Ray (RBOR) project to ensure that as part of any landscape scale project that comes out of this, the communities are supported to deliver action for wildlife in a way that is meaningful for them. We will ensure any future project includes resource to:

• support groups to gain confidence and knowledge of activities
• promote local understanding of the importance of BOR for wildlife & increase nature connection
• promote the heritage of the BOR landscape at local and regional scales, for example, intergenerational activities focussing on how communities value the landscape

It’s been an exciting start to the project and we look forward to watching it develop further.

If you would like to find out more or get involved, please contact us at Teamwilder@bbowt.org.uk