Doing the right thing for nature

My Biodiversity Care Packages

I’ve been a Conservation Advisor at Welsh Water for four years and work in the Wastewater Environmental Services Team. I am privileged to work every day with an amazing team of nature-based solution specialists – It’s my dream job.

I grew up on a dairy farm so my interest and passion for the environment started from an early age. I was surrounded everyday by nature, natural habitats, and enjoyed spending time in the woods and by the river playing with my siblings.

Growing up with nature gave me a deeper understanding of how valuable the environment is, and it gave me the desire to go to university, where I studied Science. I was very lucky to get this job following my graduation and it has given me so much satisfaction knowing I am making a difference to our environment.

During my role as Conservation Advisor, I was fortunate to win the Committee Award from the Welsh Area Institute of Water for developing biodiversity care packages. My project idea was to promote a better understanding of biodiversity with colleagues across operational areas and give guidance to site managers on how they could maintain and enhance biodiversity in their areas.

I developed the care packages and site-specific management plans, engaging and encouraging colleagues to become biodiversity ambassadors. My aim was to ensure a consistent approach to make small scale enhancement at sites across the company.

Through discussions with our operational colleagues, it became clear there was an appetite and desire to see biodiversity enhancements and changes to the way we manage our sites. These colleagues have been instrumental in driving the success of the biodiversity care packages and it also means there are always more ideas coming our way! 

By raising awareness, prompting ownership, making recommendations, twenty sites have seen an enhancement in biodiversity efforts since 2021. This has resulted in over 30kg of native wildflower seed sown which plays a vital role in providing food sources for pollinators. In addition, we have also put in place facilities to benefit the various types of wildlife which call our sites their homes. This has included installing 40 bat boxes, two bug hotels,65 bird boxes of varying sizes.

By raising awareness in our weekly newsletter, our colleagues are more aware of how they can further enhance biodiversity across the company and a collective effort ensures that we are able to better report our total biodiversity enhancements to our regulators in our biodiversity report.

I am passionate about continuing to manage the company sites to ensure biodiversity protection and enhancement in the long term and I will continue to work with colleagues at a greater number of our sites.

We would ideally like to expand this project to work collaboratively with NGO’s, local wildlife trusts and volunteers to increase the impact of each enhancement, and to develop each site bespoke to the local area and wildlife.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for improvements or potential collaborations, I would love to hear from you. You can contact our team at biodiversity@dwrcymru.com.

More information on this and other biodiversity projects can be found here in the new Biodiversity Report, Doing the Right Thing for Nature 2022.