MWHG Newsletter: 10th November 2025
- MWHG Team
- 32 minutes ago
- 9 min read
Dear Volunteers and Supporters,
At our Group's Annual General Meeting on Saturday 11th October, we were fortunate to have guest speaker Lucy Sheffield from Coastal Partners, where they shared innovative and creative ways to build nature-friendly sea defences which not only protect coastal habitats in the long-term, but also become a habitat themselves.
One example showed that strategically patterned concrete, in place of untextured walls, enabled sea vegetation and limpets to attach - this bio-layer in turn maintained the temperature of the concrete and increased the sea walls life-span.
After Lucy's talk, which highlighted various successful projects local to the Peninsula, we were invited to use our local knowledge and provide information on the Peninsula's unique coastline. This information will be considered by Lucy and their team when designing future sea defences.
Read on to learn more about what our project leaders and volunteers have been up to over September and October.
Wittering Area Community Conservation Project
By Jane Reeve | Wittering Area Community Conservation Project
We have been back out doing what we do best - cutting back vegetation, getting a bit muddy, drinking coffee & tea and eating cake, all in the name of managing habitat.
We have focussed on some of our bigger sites that need multiple sessions to get on top of the bramble, willow, nettle, and this year, bindweed invasion. We have experienced some lovely sunshine, and layers have had to come off during work, which has felt quite strange this time of year. We have managed to uncover a large number of harvest mouse nests, which has been unexpected, and not always in places you would consider ideal habitat. This has been fantastic, all records going to the Sussex Biodiversity Records Centre, as this is a not easy to record species.
We are committed to planting lots of hedgerows again this year in West Wittering as part of this project and have managed to kick start it this year with a corporate team from SiteDefender who planted 1060 trees in challenging winds creating 225 metres of new native hedge. We dug out all the trees from the Selsey Tree nursery and the West Wittering tree Nursery to use at this site and a huge thank you to the teams that have looked after these trees through the summer.
West Wittering Parish Council have successfully managed to get 2580 trees from Chichester District Council for a new hedge line along a cycle path on Cakeham Road so we will be planting trees along this section over the coming months, lots of help needed please.
Emma has been busy with a great group of volunteers delivering Wildlife Warriors sessions at Birdham and Sidlesham Primary Schools. They have been welcomed very warmly, and their activities are much appreciated by the children. Emma’s artistic skills have been put to great use, and the children have loved crafting lots of things to take home. This wouldn’t be successful without help from Lucy, Mark, Viv, Angela and Isabel. Thank you!
Pond Power Project
By Jane Reeve | Pond Power Project
The Portsmouth Water funded Pond Power project has been out and about carrying out some habitat management work over the last couple of months. This has, of course, involved cutting back the usual suspects of bramble, bindweed and nettles. We have had some invasive hops (Humulus lupulus) at Church Lane pond in Hunston, lovely this time of year, but totally tenting of trees and other vegetation and a pain to get rid of.
Dr Alison Barker came out with me on one warm and not too windy day in October, and we went dragonfly hunting. We also did a quick pond dip to see if there were any surprises lurking in any of the four ponds we are focussing on. Willow Glen had no water and no dragonflies as there is zero open water area on the pond so not what a dragonfly is looking for. Church Lane pond, Hunston, and Florence pond, Sidlesham, did have dragonflies present (Common Darter and Southern Hawker) which was great to see. Sheepwash pond, Ham, which we could hardly see, has a coating of Azolla Fern on it and no dragonflies as the water surface was quite impenetrable. I have had some great guidance from Alison about how to make these ponds suitable for damselflies and dragonflies which is really helpful.
I am going to look at the invasive species on Sheepwash Pond to see if it can be removed. There is a specific weevil that has been trialled by University College London to munch its way through the Azolla, and I have approached them about introducing this beetle into our ponds. Watch this space as I really hope we can have access to this biological control because while we have Azolla in the area it is a threat to all wetland areas as it travels so easily.
Thank you to everyone who has come out and helped at these ponds. Our work will keep going at these sites as there is more to do, so please come along and help out.
The Beryl James Tree Nursery
By Joe Savill | The Beryl James Selsey Tree Nursery
The trees that we have been looking after since last winter were lifted on the 21st of October with the help of a hardworking group of volunteers. Some have been taken to create a new hedgerow, helping to restore the network across the peninsula. The others have been planted around the wildlife area at Seal Primary School in Selsey to provide a new hedgerow habitat. It is great to have the space to provide a holding area for trees and very satisfying to see them being used in such superb projects.
We have now been tidying up the empty beds and topping them up with compost.
We now have about 500 trees left in the nursery, all grown from locally collected seed and sown in 2023 or 2024.
So far there has only been a handful of us looking after the site, and thanks to everyone for their commitment. But we do need more volunteers now the work has expanded. The tasks vary throughout the year and include weeding, watering, creating new beds, sowing and caring for very young trees, transplanting trees into the nursery beds, seed gathering and processing, as well as record keeping and general maintenance tasks.
Please do consider joining us. The more trees we can grow locally, the better. Jane needs lots of trees for her projects!
Also, please contact me at jsavill@mwhg.org.uk if you have young trees to donate or have ideas about where you would like to see trees planted in the Selsey area.
Heritage News
By Bill Martin | Selsey Tramway Project, Sidlesham Heritage Project
Selsey Tramway
The Selsey Tramway exhibition, including our film, is available at the Novium in Chichester until the end of March 2026.
Negotiations with the Church Commissioners regarding the restoration of Chalder Station continue, albeit very slow.
A couple of the information boards have been damaged and Govia Thameslink (railway) have offered to fund their replacement.
Land Settlement Association
The Weald and Downland Living Museum has prepared a press release announcing that they have started the fund raising process for the re-build of the LSA house. BBC Sounds have added The Sidlesham Experiment to their Secret Sussex Series - it features Julian Bell the curator from the museum, Norman Dixon who came to the LSA aged 9 in 1939, he's now 96 and myself.
Autumn Activities with the Wildlife Warriors
By Emma Horton | Wildlife Warriors
We have spent an exciting few weeks delivering wildlife activities to pupils at Sidlesham and Birdham Primary Schools. Many thanks to our dedicated team of volunteers who give up their time to share their enthusiasm, experience and knowledge of wildlife with the next generation.
It is so heartening to see so many schools on the Manhood Peninsula embracing the positive benefits of creating habitats and improving the biodiversity in their school grounds and allowing the children to explore outdoors. For example, Seal Primary School in Selsey has recently added a large number of trees to their wildlife area to form a new hedgerow, which in time will become a haven for birds and other wildlife. Sidlesham Primary School has a wonderful woodland area, a wildlife pond and even a dedicated bushcraft teacher, who teaches the children so much more than just the basic school curriculum. Birdham Primary School also has a pond, a woodland area and even a mature orchard on their grounds. This variety of habitats is not only great for our native wildlife, but provides pupils with a fantastic opportunity to learn about their local environment and the creatures living there.
Autumn brings the chance to embark upon new, seasonal activities with the children. The falling leaves in their rich shades of yellow, red and orange have been attracting the children’s attention, as have the many fruits, nuts and seeds that have been particularly abundant in this ‘mast’ year. It is interesting to see what the youngsters notice when given the time and opportunity to look more closely at nature. One of the children remarked, ‘ I never knew there were so many different types of leaves’.
The children were excited to plant acorns, which they hoped would grow into huge oak trees one day. Some potted acorns were donated to the MWHG, to grow on, to put into our tree nurseries at West Wittering and East Wittering. Then, when they are big enough, they can be planted locally or in the school grounds.
Autumn has also prompted discussion and activities about hibernation and care for animals as the weather gets colder. The pupils got busy building bug hotels and creating log piles for insects and other creatures to survive over winter.
After half term we will return to East Wittering and West Wittering Primary Schools for Wildlife Warriors. We plan to introduce hedgehog houses to these sites and create hedgehog highways. While the national hedgehog population has significantly declined over the last few decades, it’s important to recognise that everyone can work together to make a change for the better. Suburban gardens and school grounds are becoming crucial areas where wildlife, such as hedgehogs have a chance to recover.
Guiding for Good
By Anne on behalf of 1st Selsey Brownies | Guiding for Good
Our Girlguiding region (London and the South East) have an initiative running this October. The initiative is called Guiding for Good so we are encouraged to promote Guiding in our areas by doing something community based. As part of the initiative we should try to spread our activity to a wider audience.
Brownies undertook a litter pick this week around St Peter's Crescent, a bit of the High Street and St Peter's church grounds. We were able to do this safely as we'd kindly been loaned the litter pickers and bags rings from the Manhood Wildlife and Heritage Group. The girls were also issued with small sized latex gloves.
The girls absolutely loved doing it though a bit disappointed not to find as much rubbish as the last one at the beginning of September - a good thing. This time they did find litter but much less so, some were slightly disappointed but after chatting about it they decided it was a good thing as it means less people are dropping their rubbish or the rubbish being blown out of bins.
Their prized find was an empty bottle of wine! A half full bottle of water and a lump of wood. We did encourage them to put that back as not technically rubbish and it would ultimately decompose. Thank you so much for the equipment loans.
Hedgerow Heroes Project
By Jane Reeve | Hedgerow Heroes Project
The CPRE Hedgerow Heroes funded project has been at the planning stages, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. I have had a site visit with the farmer, on whose land the hedge is to be planted, and some representatives from CPRE Sussex came along. Luckily, we had a sunny day which meant we had a good walk around the fields and sorted out the planting locations, parking and where the Portaloo is going to go!
Next stage has been equipment, and I have bought lots of spades, bright coloured rope that will be the planting line, new hi viz jackets, and 10,000 mixed native trees plus 10,000 canes and 10,000 tree guards! My garage is getting quite full! The trees are arriving on Tuesday 18th of November, and planting starts on Wednesday 19th of November.
We are going to be planting on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, plus a couple of Saturdays, after the 19th of November, up until the Christmas break and then we will start again in January. We are going to need lots of help, with 10,000 trees to plant and 2 kilometres of hedgerow to create but this is such an amazing and satisfying activity, please do get involved.
West Wittering Tree Nursery
By Alex Ainge | West Wittering Tree Nursery Project
As we approach hedge planting season, the nursery trees have been given a light prune to make it easier to dig them out. They will be gone by the end of October.
As an experiment, I took some of the pruned stems and planted them in the middle of one of the raised beds. Luckily rain fell on them the next day, so let's hope they take root. We will see. If this works, I will take more cuttings next year.
Autumn Wildlife Survey Results
By Nikki Timney | Find Wildlife From Home Survey
In September and October, our survey received 23 wildlife records, including 57 individuals, bringing the total number of records submitted for this survey to 1,906!
View a selection of the fantastic photos and survey results received further below.
Survey Results for September and October
Tell us about the wildlife you've seen in your garden, neighbourhood and surrounding local area and we will also submit your records to the National Biological Records Centre on your behalf.
To take part in our wildlife survey, click on the button below.