It’s easy to be Wild about Frome as we’re lucky enough to have lots of different green spaces from parks and play areas to riverside meadows.
To help encourage biodiversity we tailor our management and maintenance techniques in each of these spaces. This means we create a variety of different and complementary habitats to support our wildlife and plant life. You’ll be able to tell which spots we’re keeping as a haven for bees and butterflies with our Wild about Frome signs. If there are any other areas you’d like us to leave wild let us know and we’ll see what we can do.
Get Involved
In order to protect biodiversity and support our local wildlife even more, we need to get a better understanding of what’s out there. We recently secured funding from Mendip’s Climate and Ecological Emergency Fund and are currently working with Somerset Environmental Record Centre (SERC) to create Frome’s own interactive digital wildlife map to establish a local level baseline for biodiversity in our parks, green spaces and private gardens.
While you’re out enjoying our green spaces, we’d like your help in recording what wildlife and plantlife you see in Frome. Anyone can take part and contribute, either with the fun and easy-to-use free phone app or with a good old pen and paper.
We are also working closely with the newly formed Wild Bunch group, which encourages wildlife friendly gardening in town to help reduce habitat fragmentation.
How to take part using the app
- Create a free account on the iNaturalist platform and join the Frome project https://uk.inaturalist.org/projects/frome-town
- Download the Seek app by iNaturalist to your smartphone and link it to your iNaturalist account
- Get recording!
Alternatively, you can make a record with pen and paper and upload it on iNaturalist at home, and if you don’t have access online, we will be more than happy to take your observations. You can contact our Resilience Officer Jo Morris with your observations by email or call 01373 480391.
Here’s a short video of Jo demonstrating how to record your sightings:
Frog & Toad Spawn Count 2023
From January 1st to 31st March, Somerset Wildlife Trust are running a spawn count to collect important data on the location of breeding frogs and toads across the county. Frogs and toads typically spawn from January to March and their spawning can be a good indication of where good quality water bodies such as ponds are and the quality of surrounding habitats.
To take part you simply need to record any toad and frog spawn in your garden pond, local community pond or any ponds you come across in your adventures in the countryside.
To record your findings, simply log into your iNaturalist account, search for and join the ‘Frog and Toad Spawn Count 2023’ project. If you’re already connected to the Frome Town Project, any sightings you make will also contribute to our Frome Wildlife mapping.
Getting started
If you need a helping hand in identifying wildlife and plant life or would just like to find out more about our wonderful flora and fauna, the following websites are full of useful information.
