A wonderfully wild Christmas party!

Last week we held a Christmas party to celebrate all that we have achieved for wildlife in Ipswich this year. We loved having the opportunity to thank our volunteers, champions and event participants for their involvement this year, and to introduce our work to some new faces.

The event kicked off with a speech from Ipswich mayor, Sarah Barber, introducing the brilliant work many organisations across the town do for wildlife, and to celebrate some of the work SWT have been doing in Ipswich: our hedgehog project and Closer to Nature project.

Closer to Nature is a three year project that aims to inspire a new generation of young naturalists, headed up by Ipswich Learning Officer, Lucy Shepherd. We were excited to share our project successes and aims for the coming year. Between our two projects we have had an amazing 1419 hours contributed by volunteers, and their time and expertise have been invaluable in the delivery of these projects (an equivalent of an amazing 203 working days!)

We followed the mayors speech with mince pies and cakes, tree decoration crafts, bird feeder making, quizzes and trails, and we were lucky enough to also be joined by Greenways Project, Ipswich Wildlife Group and Friends of Holywells Park who were creating wildlife homes and other festive crafts (such as amazing wooden reindeer) and providing much needed hot drinks on this crisp winters day!

A big thank you for everyone involved with our projects to date, and we look forward to seeing you at our events and activities next year!