Our Members
Each Season we feature one of our West Dorset Wilding members within our newsletter, finding out a little more about them and what led them to get involved.
​​This Autumn, Zoë Tribe talks to us about her love of nature and what led her to become an active member of our community.
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I've always loved nature and feel at home when I'm in wild spaces.
After a career in project management, I now work as a gardener and am very keen on gardening for wildlife as well as making it a beautiful space.
I love noticing all the different types of animals that visit the garden just as much as I enjoy the flowers. ​
What prompted your interest in West Dorset Wilding?
I've always supported conservation charities, as for me nature and wild spaces are the best thing about this planet. Often they've been preserving dwindling areas of habitat and clinging onto species on the brink of extinction. So it was a real joy to read Isabella Tree's Wilding book which is a positive account of nature rejuvenating. It's great to think that we could tell a similar good news story here in West Dorset.
How are you involved with the work that we're doing?​
We were fortunate enough to buy a small field behind our house. It's a very damp meadow and therefore not valuable as farmland. For me it's value always was as a space for nature but I initially felt duty bound to manage it as a bit of farmland and so at first we kept a few sheep and hens on it. The Rewilding movement gave me the confidence to let it become solely a space for wildlife. So I'm a smallholder member of West Dorset Wilding and have also helped as a volunteer at a few events.
Your favourite place in West Dorset?
​It's hard to pick one spot because I love the variety of wild spaces we have here. But I think there's always something very special about your local wild patch because you get to build up an intimate knowledge of the place.
You see it change through the seasons and can feel real excitement when a rare species pops up.
Dorset Wildlife Trust's Kingcombe Meadows and Powerstock common are close by and I often walk there and feel a real bond with those places. But I probably walk most in Hooke Park Woods (pictured above). They are being managed more sympathetically towards nature these days and it's great to note the more varied bird life and wild flowers in the clearings. Somehow, seeing something new in your local patch - like the silver washed fritillary butterflies in Powerstock common, the bee orchid at Kingcombe meadows or the goshawk I spotted in Hooke woods earlier this year - can be more exciting than seeing the most exotic of animals in another country, simply because it is in your home space.
A huge thanks to Zoe for being our Autumn featured member and for such interesting and thoughtful responses to our questions.​