Celebrating our volunteers
This National Volunteers’ Week we wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate the amazing achievements made by volunteers during this past year. Throughout the year, our staff team are busy behind the scenes recording every voluntary contribution made across the Forest, making sure that every hour of volunteer time is recorded.
What has been recorded?
We are delighted to share that between April 2023 and March 2024, volunteers contributed an incredible 13,151 hours supporting all areas of the charity’s work, from forestry maintenance, surveys, restoration efforts, all the way to events and communications.
Did you know that 13,151 hours is the equivalent of almost 8 extra members of staff?!
The time and energy given by our volunteers is helping to make the Forest a wonderful place for people and wildlife. We remain ever grateful for all the hard work and support given by our fantastic volunteers.
Breaking it down
13,151 hours is a huge amount of time, but just how has it been spent? We have had a very busy year with a large amount of work going on across the Forest. Here are a few of our amazing successes from the past 12 months:
- Planted over 20,000 trees, supplementing previously planted sites.
- Grew and extracted 18,540 trees from the tree nursery for planting out in the Forest this past winter.
- Coppiced 2,705 square meters of hazel coppice.
- Removed tree guards from 67,294 trees, across 38.6 hectares of Forest.
- Constructed 80 metres of boardwalk.
- Conducted 1,235 hours of wildlife surveys.
- Made188 visits to check the welfare of our conservation grazing livestock.
- Lent 45 extra pairs of hands to help us run amazing events for our visitors.
- Weeded and maintained 35 plant beds continuously with beautiful plants and flowers at the Garden of Heroes and Villains.
And these are just a fraction of all the amazing activities we have been able to perform this year because of our wonderful volunteers.
We are grateful for every contribution that has been made here at the Heart of England Forest by our incredible volunteers – you are truly the backbone of our charitable work – we couldn’t do it without you!
This coming year we are excited to be introducing new opportunities to volunteer in the Forest, and additional ways to be involved and learn more about the Forest and our local ecosystem.
Sign up here to receive information about our volunteer opportunities and latest news here.
