Get the Marches Buzzing

What did the project do?

The two-year B-Lines project ran from November 2022 to October 2024 and restored or enhanced 63.3 hectares of wildflower-rich habitat through Shropshire and North Herefordshire, with the aim to create valuable ‘stepping-stones’ of habitats through the urban and rural landscapes to increase habitat connectivity across the counties.

Buglife worked with a range of partners throughout the project to restore species-rich grasslands and open mosaic habitats and surpassed multiple project targets. Get the Marches Buzzing worked with Telford and Wrekin Council to improve three brownfield sites for the threatened Dingy Skipper. Furthermore, we restored a species-rich grassland near the Long Mynd to help plug the ‘hunger gap’ for the Bilberry Bumblebee with the National Trust. This site will be monitored in the long-term for the appearance of the rare Bilberry Bumblebee.

Achievements throughout the project:

During the project, a diverse programme of events was delivered, reaching over 1,317 people, including 231 volunteers who donated 594 hours of volunteer effort to the project. A big thank you to everyone who helped Buglife to sow wildflower seed, plant 17,591 wildflower plugs and maintain the heathland habitats by clearing scrub and creating bare ground.

The project also worked closely with five schools across the project area to educate children about pollinators and the importance of habitat connectivity and inspire them to act for pollinators. During the sessions, the schools created ‘stepping-stone’ habitat for pollinators within their school grounds. This involved creating bug hotels, wildlife ponds, bee hotels, hoverfly lagoons, wildflower gardens and inspired 312 children to notice and care for wildlife in their school grounds.

Download the Insect Spotter Sheet and a Habitat Review Form. These resources were designed for school pupils to help with assessing the condition of their own pollinator-friendly habitats and the invertebrates that are using them.

This project delivered five training workshops to volunteers, including a bumblebee identification event with Dr Richard Comont, from Bumblebee Conservation Trust, and a butterfly identification event with Jenny Joy, a local butterfly expert. Get the Marches Buzzing also worked with Telford & Wrekin Council to host a hand-harvesting seed workshop and a training workshop on how to use iRecord, along with some pollinator and botanical identification in July 2023. Telford and Wrekin Council created a short film for each of these events, which can be accessed on YouTube – Seed harvesting and iRecord.

The project provided advice to landowners and hosted three landowner workshops, including one with CPRE and Megan Gimber from the People’s Trust of Endangered Species discussing the importance of hedgerows and species-rich grasslands. A winter webinar series was also developed, focussing on our target species and raising awareness of the importance of heathland and meadows. The four videos can be found on Buglife’s YouTube channel, including a video on Flies, the maligned pollinators by Dr Erica McAlister, Senior Curator for Diptera at the Natural History Museum.

A huge thank you to everyone who has been involved in the project!

How can you stay involved?

Join and volunteer with a Friends of Group in Telford. Record your pollinator sightings on iRecord or take part in the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme and carry out a Flower Insect Timed (FIT) Count.

Do you live, work or manage land along the one of our B-Lines in Shropshire or North Herefordshire or are you part of a community group or school? We’d love you to help us create B-Lines and add your flower-rich habitat to our B-Lines map.

Or get in touch [email protected].