Island 2000 Trust Blog

Our latest video should be visible below, if not, click here to view it.

It’s wonderful to rummage around in the huge nest of materials that the Magpie scheme is gathering and pull out useful bits for different projects. The Vestas plywood has been specially versatile and has been put to some unlikely uses…

Haute couture

Wooden map for story-telling

Plywood nameplate

Sustainable transport

Inspired by the Footprint Trust’s ground-breaking scheme in which enthusiastic youngsters adopt the gardens of more elderly folk for the purpose of growing food, Simon proposed to make some changes to Dan’s garden. The pictures below show a team of Island 2000 volunteers digging over the ground, having dragged off the old anti-weed matting.

Next leaves and leaf-mould were collected from outside the Island 2000 workshop to dig into the clay-laden soil. This nutritious material was transported up the hill by environmentally friendly means…

Sam’s mum sent seeds of many exotic varieties, but Simon thought it was safest to start with something simple -

We’ll keep you posted on any exciting developments down on the farm.

I had the pleasure of meeting Marine Archaeologist Paola Palma today (pictured left, with pier project manager Richard Gribble on the right). No, she wasn’t boring, far from it. The Piddocks were boring. We were inspecting some of the sections of old pile retrieved from Yarmouth Pier. They show damage from Gribbles and Piddocks. Ship Worm are suspects in the whole affair too, though possibly not in this section of pile. Boring though the Piddocks may be, along with the Gribbles they were credited by Paola as intelligent creatures, and that was immediately obvious to me as they have carefully mapped the Isle of Wight in the pile. Clever stuff.

Here’s a handy I2K invention, and made entirely from recycled birch too. These are Water Vole spoons. “Don’t they have cutlery of their own?” I hear you cry. Yes of course, but that’s not the point. These are for jamming into river banks water so that the spoon bit lays out just over the water; we bait them with apple, come back the next day and scoop up the droppings left over from the feast-on-the-spoon. Water Vole’s are really rather secretive and hard to survey for, but they do have fairly distinctive droppings and what’s more we create a little mud on the platform, Water Vole footprints

are excellent i.d.

..as Paul Simon once sang, or was it Art Garfunkel on that one…?

After sustained vandalism of the interpretation panel that accompanies the INTERTIDAL sculpture we’ve had to cover it up I’m afraid. It’s sad and annoying that we have to do this and means that there is no information down there about the types of fish in the sculpture or how it came about. Here is a copy of the panel though which,

I guess, is better than nothing.

But not just yet. Simon’s off to Kent to talk to The Wildwood Trust about our early thoughts on (re) introducing European Beaver to the Island first. They have proven to be fantastically effective elsewhere at managing small, patchy and derelict wetlands and that’s exactly what we want them for. We have 3 sites in 2 river catchments identified as possibilities for further feasibility work and so far consultees seem interested and supportive however outlandish the scheme may at first appear! Their doing well in Scotland by the way.

Many companies spend vast amounts on viral marketing campaigns. We appear to have stumbled on one by accident. Well, part by accident, then we mercilessly exploited it. Very Island 2000!

Ian decided to post a picture to his personal Flickr site of the doors to our lock up at The Gatehouse, our old offices. It managed to creep out onto Reddit then hit the front page of BoingBoing and turned up on Digg too. At this point I must admit to only having a passing familiarity with these sites (shame on me, what kind of nerd am I?) but as the hit count at Flickr mounted I realised we needed to link Ian’s pic to the Island 2000 site. Result? Half a months worth of site visits in less than 2 days! (and our site is fairly well used anyway)

Well, weird is always popular on the internet, and we have all flavours on offer here. So, if you have arrived via Ian’s flickr posts, welcome. There is much more madness to behold, please browse the blog, <plug> and don’t forget, all this madness comes from positive charitable endeavour, so if you want to say thanks, why not joing our Friends scheme? </ plug> (Just trying to demonstrate I really am a nerd, even if I don’t do digg, read reddit or brave boingboing.) If you didn’t understand the < > bit, then go and learn html.