Fifteen and counting...

It’s fifteen years since the first Churchyard Nature Count began. And it’s going from strength to strength.

This year’s count is scheduled for the week beginning June 7th and runs alongside Love Your Burial Ground Week. It is organised jointly by the Church in Wales, the charity Caring for God’s Acre and A Rocha UK, who administer the Eco-Church scheme.

People are invited to discover the wildlife in their local churchyard, to record their findings and to combine their results with others, which are then collated on the Beautiful Burial Ground portal within the National Biodiversity Network (NBN), a nationwide database of wildlife in the UK. For those with smartphones, there is also an iNaturalist App where the data can be logged.

The more information that is collected the better, from trees and flowers to birds and bugs. Nothing is too small or too large.

For more details about how to do it, this link will help: https://www.caringforgodsacre.org.uk/about-recording/add-your-records/

Liam Taylor, Data Manager for Caring for God’s Acre, thanked people for their enthusiastic involvement over the last 15 years: “We really appreciate the time so many people spent recording wildlife during the week. It’s been great to receive records of species that are currently struggling in the wider countryside, such as the hedgehog, which was among the top five mammals recorded, and bumblebees, which ranked in the top five invertebrates recorded.”

CfGA Director Hannah Carty, sees that these efforts are leading to tangible conservation actions by the people managing these special sites: “Discovering the diverse wildlife in churchyards and cemeteries has inspired meaningful management changes. Communities have been installing nest boxes for swifts and other birds, adjusting mowing schedules to allow wildflowers to thrive, and creating gaps in boundaries to ensure hedgehogs can travel the distances they need to in order to forage.”