As the land awakens from its winter slumber, we continue to work to conserve and protect it.

Our purpose is to conserve our beautiful landscape, with it’s rich ecology, the fauna and flora that make it so special so that it can be enjoyed by generations to come. We seek to inform our community about the importance of the conservation of wildlife species present in our landscape, our ancient holloways and lanes and the ways in which they can help to protect biodiversity.

We have never been a group with any political agenda. It so happens that the biggest current threat to our landscape is the activity of HS2. That does not make us a political group. We are a community group, made up of members of our community; of which you are part.

So we have, in corporate speak ‘rebranded’ as the Leather Lane Conservation Group, as a nod to our work at Leather Lane but giving a truer description of the aims of the group.

Our origins were indeed a campaign against the needless felling by HS2 of the veteran oaks in Leather lane and, as widely acknowledged now, we were right to do so. The Wildlife Trusts’ recent report HERE: https://tinyurl.com/4t939rw4 about HS2’s lack of adequate surveys confirms our campaign's findings two years ago; HS2 did not carry out bat surveys in Leather Lane as they were required to do by law. Our campaign’s purpose therefore, was to ensure that the mitigation hierarchy, embedded in law, is followed by HS2, in order to protect the biodiversity they ‘missed’. But our campaign was purely in the interest of conservation, not political action.

The Leather Lane Conservation Group has evolved from the campaign group that it started out as, because over the past two years, we have realised the importance of monitoring and analysing bat activity - it is vital to local bat ecology and particularly the rare barbastelle bat colony (the only identified colony in Buckinghamshire), to establish trends in population numbers, species migration and roosting locations.

It is also extremely important to identify Special Areas of Conservation to bats, such as Juvenile Sustenance Zones. These areas can only be established by sustained monitoring and surveys.

Of course, like every other community group, national conservation groups and charitable organisations, we will campaign when necessary for the purpose of upholding our aims and objectives. However, our commitment to the surveying, collection and recording of data and analysis to better inform the conservation of local wildlife and habitat connectivity is our priority.

The Future

We have realised the importance of extending our scope beyond Leather Lane. We therefore need more volunteers and are currently in dialogue with the Chiltern Society to work with their volunteers to help monitor and collect bat data for us to analyse around the Chilterns in various sites. That way we will eventually be able to create a well-informed database of bat ecology in the Chilterns and to note trends in behaviour. Bat ecology is one of the primary indicators used by ecologists to measure and monitor the health of a local, or in this case, county-wide ecosystem.

Our bat walks

Our bat walks are over-subscribed by local residents who wish to know more about the bats of the Chilterns and their conservation. This indicates the level of interest in our project.

We aim to train more volunteers to take these bat walks to other locations throughout the Chilterns. At the bat walks we do not just share information about the species of local bats that attendees will see and hear during the walk with equipment we loan them, but we also share and impart our knowledge about the importance of conservation of wildlife connectivity as we believe this is the best way to encourage wildlife conservation; practical experience of it - hands-on knowledge.

Volunteer with us

If you would be interested in learning more about local wildlife and our work to conserve it we would love to hear from you.

Email us HERE: saveleatherlaneoaks@gmail.com 
Please continue to support us in 2023, as there is so much we have to maintain and monitor in order to continue the protection of the oaks and wildlife of Leather Lane and Ilona this year. We know it is a difficult time for everyone at the moment but we really need your help.

DONATE HERE: https://tinyurl.com/5n8wtcm3