Volunteer Kath Warner, who started volunteering with the Broads Authority back in 1994, recently received the ‘Saving Species’ award at the Norfolk Community Biodiversity Awards (23 June). The award was in recognition of her exceptional dedication over the years to surveying wildlife species in the Broads National Park.

The Saving Species award, sponsored by the RSPB, recognises individual or group efforts to improve the situation for wildlife species or species groups.

Kath Warner has been volunteering with the Authority’s Ecology team since 2011. However, she started volunteering with the BA as a conservation volunteer 30 years ago (1994) in her spare time, to give something back to nature. She is one of the volunteers with the longest record of service at the Authority.

In 2011 the Authority started recording volunteer hours, and since then she has contributed over 1375 hours to the species monitoring programme which has helped to shape our understanding of Broads’ wildlife populations.

The Broads is home to a quarter of the UK's rarest species, many of international significance. Species monitoring is integral to the Authority’s conservation objectives, and Broads ecologists collect large amounts of data on the unique and important species within the Broads each year. This data informs how the Authority manages diverse habitats of the Broads (such as fen, reedbed, riverside and wet woodland) and provides a vital baseline for monitoring species populations.

Of particular note, Kath has worked on the annual butterfly monitoring survey at transects at nine sites, with her data being submitted to Butterfly Conservation to support national datasets and inform on the distribution of rare species such as the Swallowtail Butterfly. Kath has supported countless other projects and surveys: from bittern booming counts in the small hours of the morning, to taking on the monitoring of mink rafts across the Broads to support the Norfolk Mink Programme which is helping rare water voles return to the Broads.

The award acknowledges that with many species in rapid decline, Kath’s work has directly benefited species and populations in the rare fen and wetland habitat they rely on.

Fen habitat in the Broads is a hotspot for 1,519 ‘Species of Conservation Concern’ on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of threated species. This includes Milk-parsley, the Swallowtail butterfly, Fen orchid and Fen raft spider, the bittern and marsh harrier, many of which are completely reliant on freshwater fen habitat for their survival.

Kath quietly gets on with whatever monitoring needs doing, her knowledge and skill is invaluable to the work of the Ecology team. At a time when biodiversity is in massive decline, having routine recording of species data allows the Authority to establish a baseline for important, often protected species.

Kath takes pride in her work, which she always achieves to the highest standard. She is a great role model to other volunteers, using her many years of experience to help guide new volunteers and support them in their work.

“Her dedication to biological monitoring in this unique wetland has covered everything from weekly butterfly surveys, to getting up very early to record booming bitterns at How Hill Nature Reserve in all weathers!

“This award recognises her hard work, over so many years and to see her acknowledged for how important her work is to us, and to the wildlife she’s helped to thrive,” said Erica Murray, Ecologist.

Kath’s supervisor, Ecologist Hannah Southon said:“We are delighted to see Kath’s long-standing and unwavering dedication and the important part she plays in helping us to save rare species acknowledged with this award.

“She goes out in any type of weather, be it rain or baking sunshine, wading through water, mud, reedbed and boggy locations to help collect data for surveys. She does all of this with a smile on her face and keeps coming back, year after year.”

The Broads has been losing species at a rate of six per decade for half a century. It would not be possible for the Authority to undertake the level of species monitoring it does without the help of survey volunteers. The data that Kath and her fellow volunteers collect helps support habitat management plans, and nature restoration projects with the aim to reverse this decline. As a result of conservation, volunteer and partnership efforts, the Broads continues to be a stronghold for crane, marsh harrier, bittern, otter, water vole and other rare species.

The award was presented by Phillip Pearson, Senior Conservation Officer for the RSPB, who were the sponsors for this year’s Saving Species Category.