Welcome to SHARK
We are a small environmental group based on the North East Scottish coastline village of Johnshaven. Though small we have a very active membership and are involved in several projects. The main one is our garden waste recycling project which sees green waste from the village composted at our own compost site. We are also involved in carrying out regular beach cleaning of the shoreline in our village. This website and our Facebook page will tell you what's going on and when. Minutes of all our meetings are available on the Downloads page.
Welcome to 2024!
We're just about ready for a new year, all we need is some settled weather to get going. We had our AGM on 28th January, you can find the Minutes on the Downloads page. These define our priorities for the year so if you have anything you'd like to see us doing let us know.
You may be aware of our swift box initiative which got going in 2022 with the arrival of swifts, swallows and house martins. The boxes are intended for swifts which prefer this sort of nest site. The other two typically build nests of mud in house eaves. We've got more boxes to install in 2024 before our feathered friends arrive so let us know if you're interested. Meanwhile you might want to follow the RSPBs initiative to try to get Swift Bricks included on new housing. See more at : https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/rspb-news/rspb-news-stories/swifts-back-in-the-houses-of-power--but-still-no-action/
Another area you can help our wildlife is with hedgehogs. You might not realise there are some about, but there's a useful leaflet to provide more information which you can download here. We hope to encourage more of you to help in this.
On another note, as you may know our tractor and trailer for garden waste collections has been living along at the old Millend Garage but the garage buildings have been sold on so we are looking for somewhere to move to, preferably where they can potentially be under cover during the winter, so if you know of any suitable sites please let us know.
We have posted links to a number of other initiatives on the Links page, which we are adding to regularly. There's some new material on recycling bottle tops available on the Friends of Water Search and Rescue website at https://fowsart.org.uk. Look for Recycling when you get there. On another topic, while we in Scotland seem to be controlling Bovine TB without killing badgers, in England there are still considerable numbers of badgers being killed. There is a petition to stop this you can sign at https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/stop_the_cull_loc
Garden Waste Collections are due to restart on 23rd March - we're always looking for volunteers to help out, so let us know! We've got quite a lot of available compost so we'll be looking for those of you who'd like some to start their garden for 2024 - let us know if you can use some. You can download a form to join the scheme on the Downloads page.
If you've got any ideas about projects we should be looking at let us know! Meanwhile, watch this space, and especially our Facebook page for more news, and a Happy 2024 to all our readers.