What is the Wilder Together in the Stour Valley project?

Imagine a connected network of villages and towns with local people each taking action and sharing knowledge to help nature and wildlife. How amazing would that be?

This is exactly what is happening in the Stour Valley on the south Suffolk and north Essex border. The Wilder Together in the Stour Valley project, which started in 2021 and is jointly being run by the RSPB, Suffolk Wildlife Trust, Essex Wildlife Trust and Dedham Vale National Landscape, seeks to help and boost wildlife populations whilst bringing people together through restoring, reconnecting and maintaining wild corners, spaces, streets and gardens.

Councillors and project staff at a Wilder Together workshop at RSPB Flatford Wildlife Garden. (Image: Amy Ward / RSPB Images) The idea is simple: local parish councillors and town councillors in the Stour Valley are invited to take part in ways to help wildlife workshops at RSPB Flatford Wildlife Garden in East Bergholt, Suffolk. By attending these workshops, they not only learn practical skills such as how to build bug hotels and stag beetle stumperies (a log pile that provides rotting wood underground, which is great for these beetles to live in), pond creation, building swift nestboxes and sowing wildflower meadows from wildlife experts, but they also gain advice and ongoing support on setting up community groups and projects with residents in their areas to encourage them to help local wildlife. This knowledge is shared locally, and residents are encouraged and supported to form wildlife-friendly groups to take hands-on action to help the birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects and wild areas in their towns and villages. Existing community groups are also invited to get involved.

Since the start of the project, Wilder Together in the Stour Valley has worked with 17 parish and town councillors from councils across the Stour Valley region, and gradually a network of community groups in that area have either formed or got involved in helping wildlife. A total of 12 exciting wildlife-friendly projects are now ongoing in the Stour Valley as a result of the project. These include:

House martin coming in to land. (Image: Nick Upton / RSPB Images) Bures Swift Project. Inspired to take action by the project, Bures Transition Group decided to help critically endangered swifts. After talking to our wildlife experts, the group put up 30 nestboxes for the species as well as repeatedly playing an MP3 of swift calls to entice swifts to investigate and use the nest boxes.

Natural Boxford. Through Wilder Together in the Stour Valley, the Suffolk Wildlife Trust advised the Natural Boxford group on managing green spaces for nature to thrive in Boxford. The Dedham Vale National Landscape also provided a number of swift nestboxes to bolster the swift population in the town.

Cornard Environment and Wildlife Group. Spurred on by what they learnt from Wilder Together in the Stour Valley, members of the Cornard group have taken part in house martin nest surveying, installed swift nestboxes in their parish church and have plans this autumn to sow wildflower meadows to benefit pollinating insects when they flower next year.

Welcome stag beetles into your garden. (Image: Ben Andrew / RSPB Images) With wildlife gardening in various forms at the heart of the project, RSPB Flatford Wildlife Garden, a site that exists to encourage others to help wildlife in their gardens and local communities, has been a key focal point of the work, hosting councillors and our fellow partner organisations to demonstrate best practice when it comes to helping nature locally. Gradually over time these learning events have been extended to already-existing community groups who wanted to get involved, enabling even more networking and sharing of wildlife knowledge and ways to help nature across the Stour Valley.

Some groups have big ambitions for helping nature and some are starting smaller – but all will make a difference and help to boost their local wildlife populations. We look forward to seeing the long-term positive effect of all the hard work put in by locals and have no doubt that their efforts to help nature will see great results and prove that they are all definitely Wilder Together.

If you live in the Stour Valley or just want to find out more about the project, visit dedhamvale-nl.org.uk/wildertogether

Get top tips on what you can do to help wildlife in your garden, town or village by searching ‘nature on your doorstep’ at rspb.org.uk