Siren volunteers ran a Take Home A Herb stall in the Hay Literary Festival Children’s Tent in May this year. Kids of all ages (and quite a lot of grown-ups too) potted up basil, marjoram, mint and parsley to make their gardens more fragrant. It was a great opportunity to promote coir pots, a biodegradable alternative to plastic plant-pots sold by The Natural Gardener in Herefordshire. Earlier in the week, Siren’s founder Sasha Norris chaired a session on Greening the Media with speakers from the Guardian, Sky and Penguin.

Siren is looking for new trustees with financial, legal and management expertise to join our active board. Trustees Meetings are held in Oxford up to four times a year.

Contact Nancy Gladstone for further details: info@siren.org.uk; Tel. 01865 403345

As always, Siren is keen to hear from wild and passionate volunteers…

- Multilingual nature lover? Manage international distribution of inspirational posters on the bird migration superhighway across Europe and beyond

- Impresario? Help organise high profile fundraising events for wildlife conservation

- Hungry for experience? Unpaid internships are available for people wishing to gain experience in charity administration, fundraising and proposal development.

Siren has received a large grant from housing developer Croudace Homes to produce a new educational website for young people in the UK. Watch this space for links to the developing site.

Siren has been working with Croudace on the production of a leaflet for people moving into new houses on land once owned by the Norris family (Siren’s founders). The leaflet ‘A Guide to your Friendly Neighbours’ describes how householders can encourage and protect the wildlife sharing their homes and gardens. The leaflet was illustrated by volunteer artist Laura Lydia Burtscher.

With more funding from the Vodafone Group Foundation, Siren and Tusk Trust are investigating how the fascinating and positive case studies from projects around Africa could be used to introduce the principles of global citizenship to schoolchildren in the UK and to support international school partnerships. Visit the International Page on the PACE project website for some ideas.

We are looking for UK schools to take part in the pilot. If you are a teacher who would like to get involved, please contact Nancy Gladstone at nancy@siren.org.uk

The Siren team were all set to descend upon the Truck Festival in Steventon when it was called off due to terrible floods. Our sympathies to all involved. We are delighted to hear that the festival will take place in September instead! Thanks too to Canby who donated lots and lots of items for the Siren "stall".

Siren’s latest creative educational production – the Angling Spring Wood Talking Trail - is now available for download from www.anglingspringwood.org.uk If you are planning a visit to the Chilterns, please take a look!

To set the scene… The trees of Angling Spring Wood are eagerly awaiting their visit by the Green Man, guardian spirit of vegetation. When he’s about the woods seem more alive.

Armed with audio tracks and a map, the listener wanders through the woods, with carved posts indicating interesting places to stop and listen. As you travel deeper into the woods, you will find some very talkative trees. Even the Spring of Angling Spring Wood has something to say.

The new woodland trail, close to Prestwood and Great Missenden, aims to stir the imagination, and is a novel way for family outings and schools to experience and learn about woodlands. Eleven skilled actors and actresses contributed their voices to the project. Familiar voices include film actor Toby Jones, the voice of Dobby the House Elf in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Toby’s father, Freddie Jones, a character actor with an illustrious career in film, theatre and TV, (currently to be seen on the small screen as Sandy Jones in Emmerdale) plays the Oak. Poet Oliver Bernard took the part of the Green Man.

Siren produced the Angling Spring Wood audio trail with project partners Chiltern District Council, Prestwood Nature, the Chiltern Woodland Project, and the Forestry and Woodlands Partnership. The trail was also funded by SEEDA and the Chilterns Conservation Board.
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Siren is using the power of football to help the painted dogs in Zimbabwe! Siren’s partner in our Darwin Initiative project - Painted Dog Conservation - sponsor the Iganyana Area Soccer league Dete. The football teams inspire support from the very people who set the illegal hunting snares that kill the dogs and the sponsorship has created a lot of good will towards the conservation project, and thus the dogs themselves.

Thanks to a generous donation from a supporter, Siren was able to give full kit and footballs to each of the 12 teams, each named after local wildlife. Thanks also to Pendle Sportswear who assisted with shipping logistics and printed the shirts with names such as Hotspurs Leopards, Manchester Cheetahs, and Mapale Bushbucks. Further football related donations would be most welcome, as the league has since grown and we hope to send further kit out in September 2007.

Many of the PACE materials are now available for download from www.paceproject.net The PACE pack itself has gone into its second edition, as Tusk Trust established further funds to enable the delivery of 1000 packs to the Ecoschools Programme of South Africa (run by WESSA (Wildlife and Environment of South Africa).

The PACE packs are now being evaluated through a series of questionnaires sent to projects using PACE packs all over Africa. An evaluation session at the World Environmental Education Congress, to be held in Durban in July, will be chaired by WESSA Ecoschools Coordinator Caroline Conway-Physick.

Siren’s sixth birthday party was celebrated on November 11th. Celebrations were sponsored by the magnificent Vaults and Garden Café, High Street, Oxford. We would like to extend our thanks to Vaults owner Will Pouget, an inspiring entrepreneur and spokesperson for the local and organic food movement in Oxfordshire.

Sasha Norris, Siren's founder, is part of the "Wild Thing - I Love You" team. "Wild Thing - I Love You" is Channel 4's new wildlife series. Each week, comedian Bill Bailey leads a team of experts as they attempt to solve an urgent wildlife crisis. Catch her on C4 on Sundays from October 15th!

If you haven’t yet been on the Talking Tree Trail up at Hinksey Heights Nature Park, we recommend it for an autumnal outing. The trail can be reached from Cumnor by walking along Hurst Lane, turning left halfway towards Chilswell Farm down Harcourt Hill bridleway. Alternatively, drive to the South Hinksey and Golf Course turn off the A34, drive up towards the golf course and park at the Nature Trail car park.

Once again dressed as endangered species, Siren volunteers manned (animaled?) a stall at the Truck Festival in Steventon, Oxfordshire. The festival supports the Outdoor Education Programme at Hinksey Heights.

Thanks to the Glade for making Siren an official charity of the Festival (www.gladefestival.com/siren)!Thanks to 12 intrepid volunteers masquerading as wild animals collected funds for Siren at the Glade, raising over 1200 pounds! Thanks also to Jonathan Jenkins and Abigail Chicken for working on Siren’s new inspirational video, shown on the big screen at the festival!

A badger, a ladybird, an oak tree and a woodpecker (otherwise known as Siren staff members and volunteers) led 65 schoolchildren from Aldermaston into the wild woods of the Wasing Estate. The occasion was Siren’s Environmental Festival for Kids, much enjoyed by all and kindly sponsored by the Glade Music Festival.

The adults are messing up the planet — now it’s time for the kids to take charge! Dr. Sasha Norris’ new book Super Kids is a manual for young eco-heroes with all the facts, ideas and knowledge they’ll need to save the planet. For more details visit www.greenbooks.co.uk

For an update on how the PACE project materials are being used in Cameroon, please click here

Last week, we were honoured to receive a surprise invitation to meet Madame Kadidiatou Yonli, wife of Burkina Faso’s Prime Minister. Madame Yonli is the President of the Fondation Nature et Vie, a Burkinabe environmental organization working to conserve natural resources and reduce poverty in this fascinating West African nation. The invitation came from TREE AID, one of the many organisations that contributed to Siren’s Pan African Conservation Education (PACE) project.

Nancy Gladstone, who works with Siren and Tusk Trust on the PACE project, met Madame Yonli for a cup of tea in the Cavendish Hotel in Green Park, London. It was a wonderful opportunity to find out about the environmental education movement in Francophone West Africa and we were delighted to be able to give Madame Yonli some PACE resource packs.

Siren and Tusk are currently shipping PACE resource packs to over 220 organisations in 25 African countries, whilst raising funds for French and Swahili editions. We'd also like to hear from teachers in Oxford who would be interested in using PACE packs in geography or citizenship lessons.

The Pan African Conservation Education Resource Pack is now ready for distribution to schools, NGOs and education centres in Africa. From fuel-saving stoves to rainwater-harvesting, compost making to forest product certification, the pack shares information about the environment and the very practical ways in which people are addressing common environmental problems.

The PACE pack contains:

· Films featuring inspirational projects from around the continent where people have found simple and cost effective ways to solve environmental problems

· A children’s book and poster about local and global environmental issues, including learning activities for groups and individuals

· A series of Action Sheets explaining the techniques featured, along with a directory of useful contacts to help people put the ideas featured in the films into practice

If you represent an educational organisation in Africa that would be interested in receiving these materials, please contact us!

Tanzanian artist Godfrey Semwaiko will be working on the PACE childrens book illustrations. Visit his website here .

Nancy Gladstone joined Siren as PACE Project Officer in January 2005. She is working with Dr. Sasha Norris to develop written educational materials to help viewers put ideas featured in the PACE films into practice.

The Vodafone Group Foundation is to fund PACE - Siren’s new collaboration with Tusk Trust. Featuring inspiring people and projects across Africa, PACE, the Pan African Conservation Education project, will use visual media and the written word to promote tried and tested solutions to environmental problems. Read more

Few people who live near Hwange National Park ever have the opportunity to visit the reserve and find out what all the excitement is about. Iganyana Bush Camp, opened in May 2004 by the Painted Hunting Dog Project, aims to change this. On 3-day field visits to the Iganyana Bush Camp, local schoolchildren visit the national park on a game drive, discovering the role each species of wildlife plays in its natural community. Next door, at the Painted Dog Rehabiliation Centre, they learn about the painted dogs and their plight.

Sasha Norris left her own dogs at home to journey to Zimbabwe to catch up with their African relatives the painted hunting dogs, to see how work under our Darwin Initiative grant was progressing.

Ever wonder what trees are thinking? At Hinksey Heights Nature Park in Oxford, eight trees now speak their minds on illustrated signs, proudly presenting the poetry they have inspired and telling their own tales about local ecology and traditional culture. The trail, developed with a grant from Living Spaces, was launched on 3rd July with an activity day for local families, including pond-dipping with Oxford University entomologist Darren Mann and marshmallow toasting with the Outdoor Learning Programme team. Read more

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A grant from The Ernest Cook Charitable Trust is helping to fund a Forest Schools education programme at Hinksey this year. Children from 7 different schools in under-privileged areas of Oxford are visiting the site to learn about the natural environment and get involved with different activities. At the moment children are helping build a boardwalk through the woods with funding from Awards For All.

Siren has been working with wildlife illustrator Afra Kingdon to design a poster depicting a Gods eye view of the bird migration across the straights of Gibraltar and the Siren reserve into Europe. The poster asks local people and tourists to Look up and notice this miracle of biology. It is part of an initiative to raise awareness of the migration and the continued threats to migrating birds: 55% of Europes migrant species are threatened by direct persecution; shooting, trapping and poisoning. Posters will be printed in five different languages and distributed at key points on the migration route in the Mediterranean. More information about the migration will be posted on the Siren website before the next mass crossing in July.