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193 Abbey Foregate
Shrewsbury
SY2 6AH
Volunteers with a whole range of interests and skills run local branches of the Wildlife Trust. Contact your local branch to find out about how you can get involved or to join in on a guided talk.
Across England many of our most beautiful and interesting wild places are on common land. This is no accident – the heaths, hilltops, bogs and rough grassland that make up our surviving commons offer poor prospects for agriculture – but they’re excellent for wildlife.
But commons are changing. Relatively few commoners today exercise their rights to graze livestock. At Whitcliffe grazing declined after the Second World War and ended in the 1970s, leading to much greater woodland coverage. Years of hard work by the Friends of Whitcliffe Common has now achieved a balance of open grassland and well-managed woods.
The Clee Hills are networked with commons with Catherton Common at the heart of them. Here a quarter of the commoners still exercise their grazing rights and the Trust is working with them to ensure the complex needs of wildlife, people and livestock are all addressed in the common’s management.
