From Somerset to the Seychelles

Two Somerset conservationists have hatched a plan to ‘twin’ a county school with one in the Seychelles.

After looking after the RSPB’s Ham Wall nature reserve, near Glastonbury, Site Manager Sally Mills and Melvyn Yeandle, who has been the Assistant Site Manager at Natural England's Shapwick Heath reserve, have decided to swap the wetlands of the Avalon Marshes for life in the Indian Ocean and want to share their experiences with schoolchildren in both locations.

Although they are moving thousands of miles, Melvyn & Sally’s new job is also managing a nature reserve but a rather different one from Ham Wall or Shapwick Heath of the Somerset Levels.

Their new home and place of work will be the island nature reserve of Aride, a 70-hectare site and one of the most important islands in the area for wildlife. Only the nature reserve staff live there, a maximum of eight people, but neighbouring Praslin – 30 minutes away by boat – is inhabited and has a population of around 6,500.

Sally said: “We are going to be experiencing a huge change in our lifestyle by moving to the Seychelles and even though we have the tropical weather to look forward to we’ll be facing challenging conditions like having no running water and little electricity.

“As well as managing the nature reserve and dealing with issues such as poaching of birds and their eggs, we’ll be working with local communities to raise awareness of conservation issues and overseeing improvements to facilities on the island.

“We thought it would be both interesting for children in both locations to learn about each others lives and also to find out about nature conservation in different settings and for very different wildlife.”

Sally has worked with Meare Village Primary School on many occasions during her time at Ham Wall and plans to keep in touch with them – and put them in touch with schoolchildren from Praslin – using the internet.

“I’ve already been to talk to the kids about my new job a couple of times to tell them about what We’ll be doing on the Seychelles and topics like needing to grow or catch our own food.

“We’ve also talked about also how they might feel if they were in my shoes, but we didn’t share the same concerns about no television or chocolate! They did identify very closely with our own feelings on the journey ahead though – very excited, a little scared, but about to undertake an opportunity of a lifetime.”