2025 warden conference

Made my way to the Royal Agriculture University this morning for the annual wardens shin-dig which Glorious Grasslands volunteers get invited to since we are also part of the Cotswold National Landscape.

There was an excellent roster of speakers this year. The archaeologist from the A417 road project gave an overview of the finds they are analysing as part of the statutory excavations of the work site. There were quite a few interesting things from every age since the Mesolithic period some 12,000 years ago.

We then had a talk from the Glos Raptor group about the great work done over the last number of years on tracking Goshawk, Hobby and Barn Owl breeding populations. Most of this was led by Anna, who featured on almost every slide.

The last session was a really interesting history of agriculture in the Cotswolds from one of the professors. We then had an excellent two course lunch in the dining halls of the college.

In the afternoon, I headed over with Chris to the Rough Banks reserve for a tour with the Butterfly Conservation team.

It was a really informative talk about how transect records are made, including butterflies and other species of note.

Rough Banks is a really stunning location, and it was interesting to hear how the volunteer team manage the grasslands over the winter with scrub removal and keeping the blackthorn back. The area is grazed with the belted galloways from the National Trust, which keeps the grasslands really species rich.

This is also a very rich site for devil’s-bit scabious, but so far no marsh fritillary butterflies have been recorded here.