Wednesday 23 September 2009

Electric Blue

The electric-blue flash of a Kingfisher on the River Cam this morning made my walk with Millie the Labrador special and suggested that this might be a special day.
It is not yet 3:00pm but things are going well. I have finished a successful talk to the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network at our centre at Robinswood Hill and I am waiting to make a journey to the official opening of the Cheltenham Literature Festival.

My first meeting of the day was a really pleasant catch-up session with Richard Skeehens, MD of Grundon Waste, and Ruth Roll of RR Environmental Communications Ltd. We have not met for a number of months and an update on the biodiversity work that the Trust has been able to compete with Landfill Community Fund donations from Grundon was very timely.

Grants and donations are the route by which the Trust is able to supplement the generous contributions that our members make to run the Trust and enable it to carry our novel conservation work in the county. Grundon have been extremely generous since the inception of the Landfill Tax scheme in around 1993.
The current total that Grundon has given the Trust to spend on its work is a massive £1.3 million! These donations have transformed the Trust’s ambition and capacity and enabled it to plan further ahead, in reasonable confidence of success.

Planning for 2010 is well underway and the continuing support of Grundon is enabling us to design a major new conservation campaign. The electric blue Kingfisher is a good symbol of the new work that will be started next April. I am not a believer in synchronicity, but sometimes I wonder if chance is more than a statistical function.
Kingfisher (c) Kenny Crook

No comments: