The Trust has now officially secured the new site having completed the legal arrangements to transfer the site from the Esmme Fairburn Trust who purchased it two years ago on our behalf whilst we secured the necessary long term funding to by the site. This turned into a million pound project (now fully funded) and included an amazing £90k of public donations, our most successful funding raising effort ever and included substantail donations from local councils, wildlife groups and local people (not neccsarly members) and a £1,000 from South Notts Local Group. A big thanks to everyone who pitched in.

As a thank you to individual donors Ruth Testa the sites NWT Wetlands Officer and Michael Walker (NWT Living Landscapes Officer) led a visit look at some of the work that this will fund over the next 2-3 years. The major piece of civil engineering is set to commence this week with a massive piece of earth moving to create a new area of species rich wet grassland (from existing rank grassland), using the material to create shallow reedbed and muddy margins along the lake edge and up to three islands in the lake. This will also isolate a shallow lake inlet and electro fishing will be used to make the area amphibian and invertebrate friendly.

All sorts of other things will be happening (bird hides, paths, fencing, parking, small ponds etc In addition the presence of pre historic archaeology turned up during gravel extraction also means the project will include some community archaeology work and experimental archaeology projects as part of the overall funding. Curiously one of the interesting bits of the site (well it got Michael quiet excited) was an apparently mundane site drainage ditch, which has proved to be the location of several species of beetle previously unknown in Notts.

For the moment the heavy earth moving will means bits of the site (but by no means all) will be out of bounds for safety reasons).