Susan Thompson's Blog – March 2012 Archive (7)

Feeling very positive after the L&OVe yesterday where we discussed how to make the most of the opportunity to engage local people in thinking about Lewes and Ouse Valley economics at The Linklater Railway Land Festival in June: how to help people to better appreciate the true value our living landscape, how to encourage an understanding of Nature Gain, nature care and nature share.  In the meantime   it's Nature Day in the wonderful week long Spirit of Schubert series... tune in to Radio…

A good presentation at Sustainable Sussex by Rich Howorth of Brighton and Hove and Lewes Downs Biosphere project.   

Details at www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/biosphere... this is my understanding of the aims:

 - to aquire UNESCO Biosphere reserve status for Downland and valley zones including parts of Brighton and Hove and some marine areas protecting specific areas of chalk grassland species and marine ecology by…

A leafier Lewes with more friuit to enjoy.



Mark Ridgewell of Octoberfeast has asked me to pass on details of this Friends of Lewes and Octoberfeast project hoping to raise  South Downs National Park funding for the creation of an urban arboretum:

To map the town’s apple and other fruit trees, to discover where the ancient Sussex species exist, which have disappeared and which could be reintroduced

To discover where apple and other fruit go to waste so that, with the…

I was recently invited on behalf of OVCN to contribute ideas for an Action In Rural Sussex/Lewes District Council/Community 21/Newhaven Community Development Association bid for a "Communities Living Sustainably" Lottery fund application.  I was impressed at the range of very good ideas from all the organisations represented at this meeting.  The following resume of the proposed positive benefits from the promotion of the Ouse Valley Cycle Network for local sustainable communites was…

The South Downs Way Ahead project, led by the South Downs National Park Authority on behalf of  27-strong partnership, will trail blaze the Government’s new Nature Improvement Area scheme to protect habitats and the economic and social benefits they bring.

The Nature Improvement Areas grant scheme, supported by Defra, DCLG, Environment Agency, Forestry Commission and Natural England will operate over three years from 2012 to 2015. Its aim is to create more, bigger and better…

Dismayed and confused by a rather unedifying debate about the benefits/dangers of nuclear power in the final five minutes of the Radio 4 Today programmme seemingly devoted to sound bite discussion of huge world scale issues... I found a little more detail in the following Guardian article ... 

Fukushima residents plagued by health fears of nuclear threat in their midst - A year after the power plant's triple meltdown, conflicting official information leaves families confused and…

Ouse Valley Cycle Network

During the last year a group of very committed people from a diverse range of local organisations and with representation from local towns and Ouse valley parishes have worked with the support of the South Downs National Park Authority to raise the profile of the real need for a network of safe, shared sustainable village connections for cyclists and walkers in the Ouse valley.



We have formed a constituted group, consulted widely…