The 2024 Annual General Meeting of the Friends of Oakley Wood was held on Tuesday 14th March in Barford Memorial Hall.
Chairman Liz Sheehan welcomed everyone and gave a summary of the year’s activities, which focussed largely on preparations for the BioBlitz which was to take place in the summer. She touched on the unhappy fact that one of our wildlife cameras in the wood has been stolen, but more upbeat about the almost total public approval of the upgraded paths, and the Green Flag award that the wood has again achieved.
Chris Wood gave a report about website activity, which continues to be broadly similar to previous years (except 2020, the year of COVID, when activity was significantly greater). He mentioned that a significant amount of web traffic came via a dog walking website, confirming other evidence that the wood is a popular place for dog walkers. Chris also commented on information gleaned from the trail camera – the reduction of wildlife sightings and increase in dog sightings – and posed the question that perhaps it was time to encourage the public to keep their dogs on leads.
We were grateful to be joined by our new WWT Reserves Manager, Nick Martin, who gave an interesting talk about the Trust’s reserves, wiith a particular focus on Oakley Wood. Nick is a seasoned
speaker and his talk was very well received.
The evening was rounded off with “NatureSmash!”, a nature quiz whose idea was clearly stolen from a game of a similar name featured in the BBC show “Richard Osmans’s House of Games”.
See the draft minutes for a full report of the meeting.
The draft minutes of the AGM of 14 March 2023 were approved.
Attachments: