Somerset

The aim of this page is to recognise, celebrate and encourage the self-empowerment of community agency networks (CANs) and community groups' activism for climate, environment and many other sustainability topics across Somerset.

News

Networks and sustainability initiatives

• Transition Glastonbury
• Transition Portishead
• West Somerset Together on facebook

UK and international events

UK events

UK community action events

Global or international events

2021-2030, UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, International community action events

Somerset video

Food activism

• Glastonbury Farmers Market
• The Community Farm, Chew Magna
• Incredible Edible Somerset
• Somerset Community Food, grass-roots charity in Somerset which aims to re-connect people with the social, health and environmental effects of growing, buying, preparing and eating local food
• Somerset Country Markets
• Somerset Farmers' Markets
• Somerset Local Food Direct

Towards sustainable economies

• Onion collective, added 19:29, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Health and wellbeing

Somerset Active Living

Climate action

• Somerset CAN, Somerset Climate action Network, Somerset net carbon neutral by 2030, added 11:57, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Sustainable transport activism

Long-distance footpaths in the county include: Coleridge Way, Limestone Link, Macmillan Way West, Mendip Way, Monarch's Way, Quantock Greenway, River Parrett Trail, Two Tunnels Greenway and West Deane Way. The South West Coast Path National Trail has its starting point at Minehead.

• Wikipedia:Category:Footpaths in Somerset (category)

Cycling activism

The county has one of the first National cycle routes created in Britain 3, 4 and 24 provide cyclists with ways to minimise contact with motor traffic. The Bristol & Bath Railway Path is a 15-mile off-road cycleway, following an old railway track that forms part of Route 4. The path consists of a 3-m-wide tarmacked surface, and was used for 2.4 million trips in 2007, increasing by 10% per year.[90] Route 24, otherwise known as the Colliers Way, currently runs from Dundas Aqueduct to Frome via Radstock.

Biodiversity

In 2009, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, The RSPB and the Pensthorpe Conservation Trust, with funding from Viridor Credits, began a partnership project to re-establish a breeding population of cranes at a new wetland site. A rearing facility or "crane school" was set up at WWT Slimbridge; this consists of a 1-acre (4,000 m2) marsh garden designed to rear crane chicks between 2010 and 2014 in as close to a wild environment as possible. A pre-release enclosure was also constructed on the Somerset Levels. Although the cranes are hand-reared, all humans having contact with the birds wear special grey cover-all smocks, complete with hoods, and feed the cranes using plaster cast crane heads mounted onto litter picker handles. Approximately 20 cranes are reared and released each year. The first cranes were released in 2010 with annual releases planned up until 2014. The cranes are released in Somerset, on the Somerset Levels and Moors, where the project is also working with farmers and landowners to create suitable breeding areas for the birds. A pair of cranes from the project laid the first egg in 2013.

• The Great Crane Project
• Somerset Beekeepers' Association
• Somerset Wildlife Trust
• Yatton and Congresbury Wildlife Action Group* Wikipedia:Category:Nature reserves in Somerset (category)

Open spaces

Somerset is a rural county of rolling hills, the Blackdown Hills, Mendip Hills, Quantock Hills and Exmoor National Park, and large flat expanses of land including the Somerset Levels.

• saveyourgreenbelt.co.uk, added 15:08, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Somerset § Green belt

The county contains several-miles-wide sections of the Avon green belt area, which is primarily in place to prevent urban sprawl from the Bristol and Bath built up areas encroaching into the rural areas of North Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset, and Mendip districts in the county, as well as maintaining surrounding countryside. It stretches from the coastline between the towns of Portishead and Clevedon, extending eastwards past Nailsea, around the Bristol conurbation, and through to the city of Bath. The green belt border intersects with the Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) along its south boundary, and meets the Cotswolds AONB by its eastern extent along the Wiltshire county border, creating an extended area protected from inappropriate development.

Wetlands

• Somerset Wetlands National Nature Reserve, information from gov.uk, published 19 May 2022

Rural sustainability

CPRE Somerset

News archive

2023-2024

About Somerset

Past events

• June 15, 2014, Green Scythe Fair

Campaigns

• Frack Free Somerset
• The Strawberry Line, A traffic-free route from the Mendips to the sea

From Wikipedia:Somerset

Somerset ( SUM-ər-set, -⁠sit), archaically Somersetshire ( SUM-ər-set-sheer, -⁠sit-, -⁠shər), is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Bristol, and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. The largest settlement is the city of Bath.

Near you

• Bath community action - Frome community action