A new project designed to use mapping as a focal point for community based nature recovery is underway in the Suffolk Village of Risby.

The aim of the six month project is to see what nature the village has - what has been lost - and identify areas for improvement.

Sophie Flux has been co-ordinating efforts on the ground and explains her role within the project.

Often one of the first things that people ask when they see a map is 'where is my house?'. It seems we all want to know where our place is in the world. We want to see where we live, work and play, which roads and pavements we take to get to those places, and how those places look on that flat representation of our world. 

People are surprised at how large our human based habitats are. The area taken up by buildings, our industrial areas and how our roads dissect the landscape. The one thing I am always struck by is how small an area is left for our wildlife in comparison to our man-made habitats. You suddenly realise how small the woods and the meadows are. How small the areas beside the rivers are, and how little joined up space there is for our wildlife to live and move around the landscape. Since working on this project the question I have is “where is the space for our wildlife?”

From a mapping point of view, one habitat we know very little about is our gardens and the quality of them for wildlife. According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) “Approximately 520 thousand hectares of residential garden exist in urban areas in Great Britain”, equivalent to about 2.4% of Great Britain’s land mass. If we all turned our gardens into habitats suitable for wildlife to thrive, we could fundamentally help in contributing to our nature’s recovery. 

When I was invited to join this project to map our village of Risby's wildlife habitats on both public and private land I jumped at the chance. I can see the value in mapping the places we have in our village to support wildlife, such as where we have nest boxes, wildflower areas, wildlife friendly ponds, hedgehog highways etc. Mapping in this ways bring a multitude of benefits:

1.    It will help us see what actions people are taking and where

2.    It will help us see the gaps between these actions

3.    It will help us see what barriers there are to wildlife moving across our village

4.    It will help us see what actions we can take to improve how wildlife can move through our village in the future

5.    It can helps people to see that they are not alone in trying to help our wildlife

6.    It can help motivate others to join in and to start taking action

Mapping these areas will not only show the actions people are taking, but will also help encourage positive community action in general. I’ve really enjoyed working on this project and have learnt so much about the fantastic world of digital mapping technology. It has been much easier o use than I had envisaged, and a huge thank you must go out to WildEast's mapping expert, Dr Sarah Taigel, who has really helped make the maps come alive.

I believe that mapping our village in this way will help many more communities do the same. This information will help nature recover in the very heart of where they live. The maps help us reconnect within our lanes, streets and villages to see beyond our parish boundaries. They will help us link up with our next door parishes, which we hope we can help to do the same. 

Sir Francis Bacon, a Tudor philosopher, is credited with coining the phrase "knowledge is power".  Creating maps like these will mean we acquire the knowledge to create nature recovery networks, rebuild our ecosystems, and tackle biodiversity loss. Mapping enables us to have geographical knowledge and information about our village available. Whether it be to build more ponds, plant hedges or create footpaths for people to move more easily on foot around the parish, this mapping will give us the power to do it.

Thanks to this project, I have learned skills about mapping that I have passed onto other communities and I look forward to sharing my skills with more in the future. Not only has this experience helped my village of Risby, it will also help more communities going forwards. Nature recovery is the goal of this mapping project and when we started our wildlife friendly village movement in Risby 2019, one of the goals was to link up with other villages and parishes around the county and across the country. 

Over three years on and this is beginning to come true with sister wildlife friendly communities in Suffolk: Chedburgh, Redgrave, Bredfield etc as well as communities from the South West to the North East of Great Britain. This nature recovery mapping project funded by Natural England and led by WildEast and the Norfolk and Suffolk Nature Recovery Project is a stepping stone in that journey to wildlife friendly communities everywhere, and I feel honoured to be part of that journey. Here’s to a wilder future for Risby, Suffolk and beyond.

New Paragraph