In 2024, local charities play a pivotal role in protecting both wildlife and conserving our ecosystems. From safeguarding endangered species to restoring fragile habitats, these organisations stand at the forefront of the battle to preserve our natural heritage for generations to come.

In the Isle of Man, Manx Wildlife Trust (MWT) is leading that charge to protect the local ecosystem. Whether it be through planting micro forests, marine conservation or monitoring local wildlife, their work is enacting positive change in the Island.

In a PlayItForward partner spotlight, Graham Makepeace-Warne, Head of Engagement, and Lucy Chapman, Team Wilder Coordinator, discuss the work that Manx Wildlife Trust is doing in the local community before walking us through the ways to get involved.

Graham: MWT started out in 1973 as a small group of volunteers who got together to try and prevent an oil refinery from being built at the Point of Ayre, which is now the Island’s only national nature reserve. Now, more than 50 years later, we have 29 nature reserves - over 500 acres of land, which we manage for wildlife. We also run a community engagement programme: #TeamWilder.

Lucy: #TeamWilder is recognising that the fight for nature is a people issue; we are encouraging people to get involved and take meaningful action to protect nature. Small changes in our personal lives can make a huge difference. #TeamWilder can help facilitate those changes, strengthen communities and also help protect nature. It has benefits for everyone.

Graham: You can sign-up to #TeamWilder via our website MWT.im. By signing up, MWT can then let people know about the work that we’re doing in the community and how they can get involved. You can sign up to be a member, to receive our online newsletter and even make a donation. Funding is very important to our work. Without those donations, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do.

We have a very community-led approach to working with people and setting up new activities and projects. This is why the Community Garden at Government House has been such a huge focus for us – we knew that we needed a budget to make this project happen, and this is where PlayItForward has really helped us make that vision a reality. Over the last few months, we have also planted 8,000 trees at the MWT Creg Y Cowin Nature Reserve, which is an area where we’re reestablishing temperate rainforest in the Island.

This is the first of a five-year planting scheme; we’re aiming to plant 35,000 trees over the next four and a half years. It’s a very long-term project, but it goes to show both our ambition and the scale at which we need to look at putting nature into recovery.

There are plenty of opportunities for people to get involved with volunteering, whether it be going out and helping plant trees, working in our gift shop in Peel or even helping with admin work in the office.

Lucy: Wildlife gardening is one of the most accessible ways for people to connect with nature. You don’t have to have a big garden either. Even if it’s just a window box with a few herbs, that still makes a difference. If you don’t have any access to your own green space, #TeamWilder is facilitating these pockets of land where people can come together to create a garden for wildlife. It’s an impactful way to get people on that ladder of appreciating nature.

Lucy: MWT is 50 years old now. As the old saying goes, the best time to do something was 50 years ago (the second-best time is now). We’ve had people working in the Isle of Man for a very long time, but there seems to be a feeling in the air when it comes to conservation. All of a sudden, it feels like everyone is waking up to the biodiversity crisis and they’re looking for new ways to do something about it. Volunteering and signing up for a membership with MWT is a great route to action.

Graham: We’re aiming to get one in four people acting for nature. When MWT first started out, there were so few people who cared so much about nature that they got together to do something about it. We want to bring people together. When the community sees the benefits of such initiatives, more people will want to join in.

Environmentalism is also very important for businesses. That’s borne out of the work that we’re doing with Microgaming and PlayItForward. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives are important to businesses in the Isle of Man. MWT is at the forefront of supporting businesses to deliver on their ESG goals.

We’ve been trying to conserve wildlife for 50 years now, but we’re still losing species. The Isle of Man very recently lost the Yellow Hammer. The Curlew and Lapwing are both really struggling here too. Clearly, we need to do things differently. This is why we’re encouraging people to get involved with MWT.

Ultimately, people are a part of nature. We want to make sure that wildlife and people are thriving together. The fact that the Isle of Man is the world’s only whole nation biosphere reserve really emphasises that need for us to protect our environment.

We’ve worked with the government to develop a programme called ‘How Wild Is Your Land?’. It is a two-minute online survey where people can test how wildlife-friendly their garden is. You then receive a score. But if you score over a certain amount, it goes towards the government’s ‘30 by 30’ target, to have 30% of the Isle of Man’s land and seas managed for nature by 2030.

Graham: This collaboration really started with the Micro Forest, which we started planting back in 2022. Essentially, a micro forest is a tennis court-sized area that we plant very densely with trees. There can be as many as 750 trees in that small area, which is denser than you’d normally do in any sort of woodland tree planting exercises. PlayItForward was the first partner to help us plant the micro forests and we planted two of them in Port Erin. They are doing really well – and over the next five to ten years, they will start to look like a small woodland. PlayItForward have been great at supporting us with this. When they came down to help plant trees, they brought a coffee van, a burger van and a huge group of staff who all got involved. It was a group effort!

Since then, they have also supported our puffin project on the Calf of Man. Puffins used to be popular on the Calf of Man, but they died out due to predation – quite often, rats would eat their eggs or destroy their nests. Puffins are very site loyal. So, if they weren’t born on a site or don’t see other puffins there, then they won’t choose it as a place to breed. What we have on the Calf of Man is decoy resin puffins. PlayItForward helps us to put those out on the Calf each season. We also have a speaker system which plays the sound of puffins to encourage them to settle in the area. It’s been great to work alongside them on this.

The other project that we’ve worked on with PlayItForward is around recording hedgehogs. On our website there is a button where you can record sightings of hedgehogs and other wildlife in your area. The website walks you through the ways to record them and how to specify the location without them needing to understand grid references. You don’t need to be experts in different species because it’s checked by our team. But you can upload photos that helps the wildlife to be identified.

Lucy: We received funding from PlayItForward to purchase several hedgehog tunnels which are being used right across the community – in people’s gardens, in the local churchyard, all over. People have been supportive at adding these tunnels, along with food and water, to their gardens to track whether they have hedgehogs. What we have found is that even when just recording wildlife, it makes people care more. From there, they then start looking at how they can get involved with different wildlife projects.

Graham: This community garden is a big project for us, and heavily involves PlayItForward and #TeamWilder. Everyone is looking to reduce their carbon footprint. We will never get rid of it completely, but if you can offset that through carbon credits, that can be really powerful. We delivered our first carbon credit scheme recently, and we’re definitely looking to do a whole lot more in the future. MWT is also looking into biodiversity credits and biodiversity net gain, so that any new developments must offset any damage that they’ve caused in creating those new dwellings. MWT is really well placed to help businesses achieve that.

Supporting local charities is a core pillar of PlayItForward’s work, and working alongside MWT has not only helped us contribute positively to the local community but has brought our team closer to nature and inspired us to introduce changes into our own lives.

It is at a local level that you can really begin to see change happening. The Micro Forest project is one that will be around for generations to come – PlayItForward is leaving its mark on the Isle of Man community, and we would strongly encourage other businesses to consider doing the same. No action is too small.