Kingston University London

Come and see us at the Fresher's Green Fayre

On Tuesday 21st September we will be at the Sustainability Team Fresher’s Green Fayre. We will be making insect boxes to place around the campuses and we’ll need your help! You can also chat to us about what we do for biodiversity around the campuses and how you can get involved by volunteering for our conservation projects and ecological surveying.

Campus Watch is launched

CampusWatch (www.kingston.ac.uk/campuswatch) is a new initiative from the Sustainability Team. Although we undertake biodiversity surveys all year round, you may have spotted something that we missed! We would love to hear all about your campus wildlife sightings whether it be plant, bird, mammal, insect, amphibian or fungus.
CampusWatch is a short, easy to use website form where you can log all of your sightings. If you managed to get a picture of any wildlife on campus, we’d love to see that too! Just email it to biodiversity@kingston.ac.uk.
The best sightings and pictures will make it onto the biodiversity website!

Toxic Rhododendron cleared from Kingston Hill Pond
The masses of Rhododendron that had dominated the fringes of the pond at Kingston Hill have at last been removed.

Although Rhododendron may look attractive, it can be very harmful to biodiversity. It is not native to this country, meaning that it has very few natural enemies here. This led to the area around the pond becoming overgrown and out of control. The particular species of Rhododendron that was growing (Rhododendron ponticum) can also be toxic to its environment. This can be seen by the fact that nothing at all was living in or growing under the large shrubs. Now that the Rhododendron has been removed we are hoping to see the pond naturally rejuvenate so that it can once again be home to a wide range of wildlife. 

Our first pond clearance is a brilliant success!
Our clearance of Kingston Hill pond on the 31st of January was a great day and a brilliant achievement – around 2 thirds of the encroaching reeds were cleared. The pond now has open water once again for the first time in about three years. There was no sign of any amphibian life in the pond, but we are hoping that this time next year will be a different story.

A big thank you to the volunteers who gave their time and effort to help us: Asif, Jack, John, Mattias, Nicky, Nicola and Tim.

Thanks also to Martin Crosby of Junction 49 who helped to organise and run this event with us. To find out more about Junction 49 visit their website.

We are already organising the next stage of the pond restoration which will involve pumping the pond of water and removing the concrete banks to create more natural banks. We will need volunteers to help us with this so please get in touch.