The Manx Wildlife Trust recently held their third annual Raise a Ransom for Wildlife event at the charity’s Close Sartfield nature reserve in the Ballaugh Curragh. Once again, the event involved volunteers from the local community being “held to ransom” while carrying out a morning’s “hard labour” on the reserve.
Under the guidance of Reserves Officer, Tricia Sayle, the Manx Wildlife Trust’s award-winning team of regular conservation volunteers – or Muckers as they’re more commonly known! - has been busy working on one of the willow coppice blocks at Close Sartfield in recent months. Coppicing has been practised in British woodlands for centuries and involves cutting down trees, allowing the stumps to regenerate for a number of years then harvesting the resulting stems. The stems are then used to make various products such as brooms, faggots (bundles of stems that are used on the Trust’s reserves, and more widely around the Island, to help prevent riverbank erosion) and wattle fences. During the Raise a Ransom for Wildlife event, the “hard labour” carried out by volunteers Bartosz Niski from the Strand Group and Graham Sowrey from Cayman National Bank, involved making lots of wattle fences, with a little help from the Trust’s Fundraising and Wildlife Advocacy Officer, Anne Marie Kilgallon, Tricia and some of the Muckers.
Every now and then Bartosz and Graham were allowed to take a break from wattle fence-making to make telephone calls to family, friends and colleagues in an attempt to raise their “ransoms.” Taking into account a kind donation from Tower Insurance - one of the Manx Wildlife Trust’s long-standing Corporate members - as well as all of the “ransoms”, the event raised just over ?800, all of which will go towards the cost of maintaining and managing the charity’s 21 local nature reserves.
Commenting on the event, Anne Marie said, “On behalf of the Manx Wildlife Trust, I would like to thank everyone involved with this year’s Raise a Ransom for Wildlife for their tremendous support, in particular Bartosz and Graham for being such good sports and helping us to raise much-needed funds for our charity.”
Anne Marie went on to say, “In this, our charity’s 40th anniversary year, we can’t stress enough how important it is for us to be able to continue our efforts to protect Manx wildlife for the future. The work that we do to keep our reserves as safe places for wildlife is key to meeting this aim and fundraising events such as Raise a Ransom not only raise valuable funds for us but also help to spread awareness of our nature conservation work.”
To find out more about the Manx Wildlife Trust and for details of special events and activities taking place throughout the charity’s 40th anniversary year, visit www.manxwt.org.uk.
Photo – (L-R) Graham Sowrey and Bartosz Niski making a wattle fence.
