Our next online meeting will be on Wednesday 23rd March at 7.30pm, when we’ll hear from 
Rhys Evans of Nature Friendly Farming Network, Richard Smith of Butterfly Conservation, and Malcolm Edwards of Gwenlais Coppice and Charcoal.  

The Nature Friendly Farming Network is growing in presence year by year. It has been mentioned before in a recent CMG meeting, when we heard from Sorcha Lewis in the Elan Valley and who is a member of NFFN. Rhys Evans is the organiser of the network in Wales, and will tell us about its aims and how it works.

Brown Hairstreak butterflies have declined alarmingly in our county and elsewhere, and this is connected with autumn flailing of hedgerows. Richard Smith of Butterfly Conservation will explain why.Another method of managing hedges is hedgelaying. 

Malcolm Edwards is a hedge laying contractor based in Carmarthenshire, and he will be telling us about the benefits to wildlife of managing your hedges this way, and about the numerous styles of hedge laying seen in different areas of Wales.

CMG members can attend all our meetings for free. Non-members are also very welcome – but if you aren’t a member, or you know of anyone who might want to attend the meeting but isn’t a member, this link will enable you to get a £2 ticket to the meeting.  Please share it with anyone you think might be interested:https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-nature-friendly-farming-network-hedge-management-brown-hairsteaks-tickets-221552668997

If you’d like to become a CMG member, visit: https://membermojo.co.uk/cmg

In addition to this there are some other upcoming events that may be of interest.  Plantlife are running two events locally, the first is:

30^th March, Kidwelly: Meadow Making workshop – basic principles of creating a mini-meadow

https://tixoom.app/plantlife/7q7uhpvc ,  and the second is:

21^st April, Carmel NNR: Reptiles and amphibians of our meadowshttps://tixoom.app/plantlife/cbd5qy7l

One of the few good things to have come out of the Covid pandemic has been the increase in online webinars that has enabled people to attend meetings that they would not normally have been able to travel to.  The recent WWBIC recorders forum, with several interesting presentations (including one by Laura Moss from our steering group on the Big Meadow Search) is now available for anyone to watch on WWBIC’s YouTube Channel:

Plantlife also has a YouTube channel, and there are a lot of very interesting talks and webinars on there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFRRrWp9DzpPUNbv25xR1cQDon’t forget too that we have our own YouTube channel, and all our online meetings have been recorded and can be seen there: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1szE6Y3JQMP-6ukQejGdVQ