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, so much so that The Bee Friendly Trust recently appointed Frome as a Bee Friendly Town. You’ll be able to tell which spots we’re keeping as a haven for bees and butterflies with our Wild about Frome signs, and If there are any other areas you’d like us to leave wild let us know and we’ll see what we can do. The Bee Friendly Trust
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 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:
The Big Count 2023
From 16th June – 25th June, Somerset Wildlife Trust are running their Big Count.
The Big Count is part of their Great Somerset Wildlife Count initiative – Somerset Wildlife Trust’s annual programme of citizen science species counts across the county. They run counts for single species or small groups of species but the Big Count is the big one!
Once a year they ask everyone to keep their eyes peeled for a handful of species over an extended period of time for The Big Count! Some of this year’s species include slow worms, dragonfly, snails and many more.
Don’t forget to record your findings, simply log into your iNaturalist account, search for the Frome Town Project, any sightings you make will also contribute to our Frome Wildlife mapping.
Frome’s Big Community Bat Count
In May Frome Town Council along with The Wild Bunch and FROGS and being supported by the Somerset Bat Group, held their first Bat Count. 38 volunteers formed 7 teams at various locations across Frome and recorded a whopping 102 bats and 9 species, to see the results visit Observations · iNaturalist.
The next Big Bat Count is taking place on Wednesday 23rd August and there is still some availability for volunteers to join. Anyone who would like to take part should email Jo Morris.
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.
