Sophie Webster says hello to a bank vole. Image by: Catch My Drift.
Award nomination for Sophie
Amongst all the gloom and doom of the new Lockdown with pubs, restaurants and non-essential shops closing on Thursday, Northumberland Wildlife Trust has received some great news.
For Sophie Webster, Project Officer on its Catch My Drift project has been shortlisted for the National Biodiversity Network Trust (NBN Trust) Newcomer Award in the 2020 Awards.
The Awards, sponsored by Opticron, Nature Photographers Ltd, William Collins and British Wildlife magazine were developed in 2015 by three major organisations in the ecology movement: the National Biodiversity Network Trust, the National Forum for Biological Recording and the Biological Records Centre.
Sophie, from Hartburn, graduated with a BSc Degree in Wildlife Conservation from Liverpool John Moores University, before returning to the region during spring 2019 to assist with the Catch My Drift project at East Chevington.
She was shortlisted because of her significant contribution to wildlife recording on the 185-hectare site as part of the project that is working to protect and revive threatened habitats and provide refuge for different species.
With a team of volunteers, Sophie has recorded over 1700 individual records of 438 different species across the site in a 12-month period, including 276 brand new species such as hedgehogs, fungi and flowers.
There is nothing Sophie won’t do to get species records. On one occasion, she climbed through a hedge in the mud to install a trail cam and literally climbed out backwards and on another, she was so engrossed in a wildflower survey she didn’t realise her car keys had fallen out of her pocket. It took two volunteers and a metal detector to find where exactly in the large field she had dropped them.
Speaking about her nomination, Elaine More, Northumberland Wildlife Trust Development Manager says: “What Sophie has achieved in the past 12 months is outstanding. Myself, her colleagues and volunteers, known as the Sophettes, have nothing but praise and respect for her.
“Seeing her enthusiasm and skills in ecological recording develop has encouraged the Trust to create more entry level roles when developing projects.”
Sophie will have to wait until 18th November to find out if she has been successful, but in the meantime, everybody has their fingers crossed for her.
The Catch My Drift project is working to protect and revive threatened habitats and provide refuge for different species on the Druridge Bay site. National Lottery players via a grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund fund the project.