Armed with rubber gloves and rubbish bags young people from Larkhill went out on a litter pick in their local wood yesterday to tidy things up for..slow worms.
The group of youngsters aged 13 to 16 years gave the wood a good spring clean as part of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust's Wiltshire Litter Awareness campaign, launched last week.
The driving force behind the event is keen environmentalist Joe Mulvany (14), who happens to have a passion for slow worms. It was while on a hunt for nesting places that he discovered these elegant legless lizards have to make their homes surrounded by rubbish.
"It was horrible to see to see all the stuff that they have to cope with. We found hub caps, bottles, cans, toys, plastic bags, a football, tyres and loads of dog poo that had been bagged but not binned," says Joe.
"We were really worried that slow worms and other animals would crawl into cans and not be able to get out again. And they could get cut on all the broken glass. Iíve seen a poor rabbit nearly throttled by a plastic beer can-holder wrapped around itís neck."
The group ended up filling six large bin bags with rubbish in just half an hour and left the wood in a state that people and wildlife alike can enjoy.
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Joe and his friends are studying the living places of slow worms because they hope to encourage them to nest in the playing field adjacent to their Army Welfare Service youth club in Larkhill by recreating similar habitat.
They are developing the land into a fabulous green space as part of the Trust's Heritage Lottery Funded Xplaination project.
Slow worms
John Sutton, the Trust's Senior Waste Minimisation Officer, says: "These young people have shown such fantastic initiative to go out and clean up these woods. Through the project, they have been encouraged to get close to nature and by doing so have discovered how litter harms wildlife and destroys everybody's enjoyment of the countryside.
"What more positive message could there be - that if we all take a stand against litter we, and our wildlife, will benefit."
The Trust is encouraging people to take photos of any litter they come across and send it in to the Trust. It will then attempt to highlight the litter problem to the landowner and see if there is a way it can help resolve the issue. The worst examples will be published on its website www.wiltshirewildlife.org.
The Trust's Wiltshire Litter Awareness campaign is funded by The Underwood Trust. It is linked to the national Stop the Drop crusade launched earlier this year by author Bill Bryson, president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE).
The CPRE campaign aims to highlight the awful impact of litter and fly-tipping, giving people the campaigning tools to demand action, and lobbying the Government for more leadership to tackle the problem.
Please send your photos to HYPERLINK "mailto:johns@wiltshirewildlife.org.uk" johns@wiltshirewildlife.org.uk . Please keep your photos to a maximum of 10Mb.
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