Brian Palmer - volunteer environment monitor

[Kylie Jones Mattock, site manager] 
Cwm Mynach is the largest Woodland Trust site in Wales, so our long-term vision is to gradually transform this from a predominantly conifer woodland to a predominantly broadleaf one.  

Brian has been instrumental really in enabling us to carry out a water-monitoring project here at Cwm Mynach. 

[Brian Palmer, volunteer environment monitor] 
Once a month I come and take water samples out of two of the inlet streams to the lake here and they go off to Bangor and Lancaster University for analysis and that's going to help us understand what the impact of changing the mix of trees in the catchment areas is going to be. 

[Kylie]  
He's just so reliable, coming up here in all weathers, making sure that the data gets collected. Without Brian, this project would really probably not have got off the ground. 

[Brian] 
I started doing this and then I got involved with some of the national events like the Royal Welsh and Eisteddfod. I also sit on a couple of the all-Wales advisory boards and for the last three years I’ve been a volunteer speaker on the Ancient Woodlands Restoration Programme which has been great fun. I’ve been going out, talking to lots of different groups all across North Wales, telling them about ancient woodland and why it’s important, and occasionally I get home. 

[Kylie] 
He's fantastic at getting our message across to other people. You could see that all the participants were really enthused about the project and about ancient woodland. The way he joins up the roles as well. Brian makes really important links and he’ll join those up with other people within the Trust who really need to talk to those individuals. 

There's no way I could do this on my own and having a volunteer who is great to work with like this just frees me up and enables me to get so much more out of the estate and the sites I manage. 

We really see Brian as an integral part of the Wales team. 

[Brian] 
Because I do such a variety of different things, it's always interesting, it's always enjoyable. It’s great just to be outdoors, walking and working and, you know, seeing wonderful places like this. If you’ve got a spare half day once a month, come and do it. Yes, absolutely. The people that I work with in the Trust are all very supportive and make it even more enjoyable.