A major part of The Wild Watch project was surveying key species to find out exactly where they live.

We cannot look after our wildlife if we do not know how they are doing, whether they are common or rare, where they live and what habitats they require to flourish.

During this three year project, around 1,700 surveys were completed by a mix of professional surveyors and volunteer surveyors, recording sightings of species on The Wild Watch species list.

We carried out:

• Bird surveys recording sightings of woodland and wading birds.
• River bank surveys looking for signs of otter and water vole, sightings of kingfisher, dipper and grey wagtail, and recorded occurrences of some invasive plant species such as Himalayan balsam.
• Plant surveys looking for bluebell, common spotted orchid, mountain pansy and other varieties, as well as some invasive species, such as Himalayan balsam.
• Invertebrate surveys recording sightings of specified species such as garden bumblebee, mountain bumblebee, green tiger beetle, wall butterfly and small heath butterfly.
• Pond surveys carrying out eDNA analysis of small samples of pond water looking for traces of great crested newt DNA.

The results so far

See our 2017-2018 habitat suitability modelling (HSM) report for preliminary information on what we know so far about each species’ habitat requirements through the surveys undertaken in 2017.