The project is seeking volunteers from all over Wiltshire to survey orchards, help restore orchards, pick the fruit and enjoy it. A Surveyors Pack and training will be provided to identify Wiltshire’s nearly 500 existing orchards from aerial photos, and to survey them to determine their extent, their condition, whether they are traditional or not and what wildlife live in them. At present, very little is known about Wiltshire’s orchard habitat and ground-truthing is needed to determine the reliability of any information that does exist. The Wiltshire Traditional Orchards Project wants to find out as much as possible about the number and type of orchards in Wiltshire. If you have fruit trees or orchards in your garden, on your land, or in your village or local community, please contact WTOP. you can also help by filling in the Orchard Owners Questionaire that can be found within the Surveyors Pack online. If you would like to become a volunteer orchard surveyor, or would like to get involved in any other way please complete the volunteer signup form and return it to WTOP. The volunteer signup form can be found at the bottom of this page and our contact information is on the Contact Us page. WTOP would like to be able to link orchard owners up across the county to further improve the protection of Wiltshire's orchards. If you would like to be part of a private orchard food group where you can network with other people and share your orchard experiances and make new useful connections, then please email Jacky Thomas at: worldchangers@wiltshirewildlife.org WTOP will be working with Jacky, who runs the Wiltshire World Changers Project, to set-up an orchards group address book that will only be sent to everyone who signs up. |


