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Case Studies from our project: Coalface to Wildspace: Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire & Lothians

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Developing our Coalface to Wildspace project in Scotland has been an inspiring journey. Along the way, we’ve connected with some truly incredible organisations and individuals. Explore the case studies below to discover their stories.

Fernbrae Meadows Allotments 

Fernbrae Meadows Allotments became involved in the Coalface to Wildspace project after an introduction from South Lanarkshire Council’s Landscape Services team. Froglife’s vision for what the site could become, an allotment that nurtures both people and wildlife, resonated strongly with members. The allotments already host bird and bat boxes, a small pond, and plans for further habitat features, but the project opened up a much bigger, more ambitious possibility: creating a true wildlife corridor linked with Fernbrae Meadows. With the support and enthusiasm of the Park Rangers, whose deep knowledge of the local environment has long inspired the community, the committee quickly recognised the transformative potential of the work. They helped drive the 2025 consultation by mobilising members to complete Froglife’s survey, showcasing both the biodiversity already present and the strength of community commitment to enhancing it.

The proposed developments through Coalface to Wildspace would have a profound impact on the allotments and the wider community. Additional ponds would support amphibians, bringing natural pest control to the resident allotment slugs, and create a richer, more resilient ecosystem that local people could take pride in. The partnership with Froglife and the Park Rangers would also open the door to educational events, family activities, and opportunities for local schools to engage with nature on their doorstep. The committee hopes this marks the beginning of a long-term collaboration, positioning Fernbrae Meadows Allotments as a leading example of how urban growing spaces can champion biodiversity while strengthening community connections.

Volunteer Story

This volunteer’s journey with the Coalface to Wildspace project began unexpectedly when Froglife were running a consultation workshop at their local LGBTQ+ social group run by MYPAS (Midlothian Young Peoples Advice Service) in Dalkeith. Already passionate about amphibian conservation, they approached the Project Manager to ask about upcoming volunteering opportunities. That conversation sparked a deep and ongoing involvement in the project’s development phase across the Lothians, South Lanarkshire and Ayrshire. They have long believed that community‑based conservation is one of the most effective ways to protect wildlife: when people care about the land around them, they help create landscapes that are more sustainable and resilient. Coalface to Wildspace’s focus on helping communities rediscover and re‑imagine forgotten pockets of land resonated strongly with their belief that nurturing local stewardship is key to long‑term environmental change.

In 2025, they played a central role in the project’s community engagement and research activities. Their work involved identifying organisations interested in transforming neglected spaces into thriving amphibian habitats and reaching out to explore potential partnerships. Speaking with such a wide range of inspiring groups was a highlight of the experience with one of those connections leading to the volunteer’s current employment. Their motivation was also deeply personal: near their home, they have watched once‑natural areas become stripped bare by urbanisation. The possibility that Coalface to Wildspace could help bring wildlife back to these places, allowing plants, fungi, amphibians and other species to flourish alongside people felt profoundly important. Volunteering with Froglife has also had a significant impact on their own development. The project contributed to their Saltire Summit Award for over 500 hours of volunteering, helped them secure a role at One Dalkeith, and led to a nomination for SCVO’s Volunteer of the Year. They credit the project with opening doors, building confidence, and giving them the chance to contribute to a future where communities and wildlife thrive together.

Watch this space for further updates on our Coalface to Wildspace project in Scotland. 

 

 

 

 

Dinosaurs, and a new fossil lizard on the Isle of Skye, Scotland

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Roger Downie, Froglife and University of Glasgow

The Jurassic Coast of Dorset and east Devon is internationally known: a UNESCO World Heritage Site, designated for its wealth of fossil-rich rocks. Less well known is that the Isle of Skye is also a key site for fossils.

Although local people had long known about the occasional occurrence of what looked like giant footprints on the shores of the Isle of Skye, scientists had not seen good evidence of dinosaur remains on the island, despite the sedimentary rocks being of the right sort of age, until the 1970s.

Michael Waldman, who died this year, but then a geology teacher, was leading a school field trip and discovered what turned out to be a rich fossil site at the village of Elgol. Over the years, Jurassic mammals, fish, amphibians and reptiles have been found at the site including one named after Waldman as Eileanchelys waldmani  (Waldman’s island turtle). In the Jurassic period, 199-145 million years ago, the land that became Skye was part of the vast continent of Pangaea and located south of the Equator with a climate similar to modern Florida. The Jurassic was the time when dinosaurs were the dominant land animals.

On Skye, intense investigation followed the discovery of a massive sauropod dinosaur femur in 1994, and new discoveries are now made most years. Dinosaur footprints have been discovered at several beaches: An Corran, Score Bay, Brothers’ Point and Duntulm. These are so accessible that commercial guided tours are advertised for visitors to see them. White & Ross (2020) have reviewed the history of these discoveries.

The Jurassic fossils found on Skye are not only of dinosaurs. They include small mammals, turtles, marine invertebrates, lizards and amphibians. The early scientific work was led by Dr Neil Clark of Glasgow University’s Hunterian Museum, latterly joined by Professor Steve Brusatte and colleagues, University of Edinburgh. Examples of recent discoveries include:

2016: A tiny lizard, 6 cm long, named Bellairsia gracilis after the eminent British herpetologist Angus Bellairs.

2017: a remarkably well-preserved large pterosaur

2018: a mouse-like rodent

2020: new deltapodus at Brothers’ Point (a deltapodus is the fossilised footprint of a stegosaur).

Bellairsia gracilis. The 6cm long lizard.

This year, two major scientific papers have been published based on fossil reptile discoveries on Skye. First, Blakesley et al.(2025) have reported on an extensive set of dinosaur trackways from Prince Charles’s Point (named after the location where Bonnie Prince Charlie is thought to have escaped capture following his defeat at Culloden in 1746) on the northwest coast of the Trotternish peninsula.

Fieldwork at the site, only possible at low tide, extended over several seasons, 2019-24. The team recorded 131 dinosaur trackways (each having at least three tracks), 65 of them being made by bipedal three-toed carnivorous theropods, most likely Megalosauripus, and 58 by quadrupedal herbivorous sauropods, likely Breviparopus (with a few of the trackways unidentifiable). The site had been studied in the 1980s, but the researcher involved had concluded that the marks he observed in the rocks were from ancient fish resting burrows.

The present authors have undertaken extremely detailed measurements and photographic recording of the depressions to arrive at a very different conclusion. The evidence of different directions of movement indicates a population milling around at the shallowly submerged margin of a lagoon. The high proportion of carnivores is a surprising result from the study. Trackways like these can rarely be preserved, as they will eventually be eroded away, so it is important that scientists record them thoroughly while it remains possible.

Second, Benson et al.(2025), a multinational team from the USA, UK and France, have described Breugnathair elgolensis (Breugnathair is derived from Gaelic, meaning ‘false snake’; and elgolensis is from Elgol, the location on Skye first worked on by Waldman). The specimen (NMS G. 2023.7.1) was discovered in March 2015 at the Elgol Coast Site of Special Scientific Interest, and extracted as a block of limestone 22x18x15 cm. The block was submitted to a wide range of modern imaging techniques (CT scanning; X-ray tomography), whole and in parts, and some of the fossil bones were sectioned. Their highly technical results have been put into context along with another paper by Marke et al. (2025) by Zaher (2025).

Zaher frames his commentary using Antoine de Saint Exupery’s story from The Little Prince: his childish drawing was interpreted by adults as a hat, while he himself claimed that it showed a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant! Message: things are not always what they seem, and snakes have remarkable ability to consume whole prey much larger than their heads. This ability derives from several evolutionary innovations, mainly the mobility of the head skeleton, and  of sharp-pointed curved teeth. Marke et al.’s results push the divergence of squamates (snakes and lizards, now more than 12,000 species) from Rhynchocephalians (now only one species, New Zealand’s tuatara) further back than previously thought, to the early middle Triassic, 247-241 million years ago.

Benson et al. provide the most complete description so far of a parviraptorid, from the mid Jurassic, 167 million years ago: previous descriptions of incomplete specimens of this enigmatic group, which existed for 20 million years from the mid Jurassic to early Cretaceous, have revealed such a mix of characters that investigators concluded that the fossils contained more than one species. However, Benson’s results show these characters belong to a single species. Their analysis does not resolve the issue of whether parviraptorids are early snakes, early lizards or a side-line with no long-term outcome, hence their generic name meaning ‘false snake’. Zaher concludes: ‘the data reframe the debate and highlight the limitations of drawing far-reaching conclusions from fragmentary material…evidence suggests that the key snake characters, such as hallmark dental features, might have evolved multiple times, or might have been more widespread among early squamates than was previously thought’.

One thing is clear from all this: the Isle of Skye is likely to be a fruitful site for exploring reptile evolution for some time to come. However, if you are tempted to rush off to Skye, please read the JNCC’s (1997) Fossil Collecting Policy Statement first, detailing permissions needed and best practice guidelines.

Click for references

Benson et al. (2025). Mosaic anatomy in an early fossil squamate. Nature 1/10/25

Blakesley et al. (2025). A new middle Jurassic lagoon margin assemblage of theropod and sauropod dinosaur trackways from the Isle of Skye, Scotland. PLOS ONE 20(4), e0319862.

Marke et al. (2025). The oldest known lepidosaur and origins of the lepidosaur feeding adaptations. Nature 10/9/25

White & Ross (2020). Jurassic Skye: dinosaurs and other fossils of the Isle of Skye. Pisces Publications.

Zaheer (2025). Mix-and-match fossils tell the tale of snake and lizard evolution. Nature News and Views 1/10/25

Campaign success: £5,185 raised for Scotland wildlife ponds

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We are thrilled to announce that our Coalface to Wildspace Scotland crowdfunding campaign has successfully raised £5,185, smashing our £5,000 target.

The response has been extraordinary. The Froglife community raised an astonishing £1,875 in just 3 days to get us over the line, with some supporters even donating again to make sure we reached our goal.

What this means

This crowdfunding success demonstrates genuine community appetite for connecting Scottish children with wildlife. We will now approach funders with evidence that communities across Ayrshire, Lothians, and South Lanarkshire want this project to happen.

The funds raised will enable us to create accessible wildlife experiences in schools and communities, transforming neglected urban spaces into thriving habitats where children will discover amphibians and reptiles for the first time.

 

 

The next steps

With this community backing secured, we will now work with funders to secure the additional support needed to create wildlife ponds across Scotland. The stronger our crowdfunding success, the better our case for expanding this transformative work.

Our sincere thanks

To every supporter who believed in this vision – from our earliest donors to those who joined the final push – thank you. You have made it possible for us to demonstrate that Scotland wants children to have meaningful encounters with wildlife while supporting conservation of declining amphibian populations.

Thanks to your support, we are ready to create spaces where Scottish children will experience the wonder of discovering wildlife in their own communities.

Updates on our progress will follow as we work to bring these wildlife ponds to life.

Frogsongs Poetry Collection

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Supporting our Coalface to Wildspace Scotland Campaign

Froglife trustee Gordon MacLellan has created a remarkable collection of poems celebrating reptiles, amphibians and their habitats. Many of these verses were written specifically to support our Coalface to Wildspace Scotland campaign, connecting the wonder of poetry with practical conservation action.

About the collection

Frogsongs features poems that capture the magic of wildlife encounters – from the “golden wonder and amphibian delight” of discovering your first toad to praise songs for Scottish waters. As a trustee, zoologist, artist and storyteller working under the name Creeping Toad, Gordon bridges creative expression with conservation messaging.

Campaign connection

The collection demonstrates how art and environmental action work together. Gordon’s Questions poem asks: “What will you do when mud unfolds legs, and a toad’s eye opens and draws you into golden wonder and amphibian delight?” Our Scotland campaign creates exactly these transformative spaces.

We are creating 6 new wildlife ponds across Ayrshire, Lothians, and South Lanarkshire where over 200 Scottish children will discover amphibians and reptiles for the first time. These poems celebrate the same wildlife encounters we are making possible.

Campaign progress

Thanks to 83 supporters, we have raised £2,480 towards our £5,000 target – just £20 away from the halfway mark. Donations are being doubled through our match funding arrangement until we reach our goal.

Download the collection

The poetry collection includes information about our Scotland campaign and shows how creative work can support practical conservation outcomes.

Frogsongs poetry collection

Support our campaign: 

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/save-scotlands-ponds-and-wild-spaces

Save Scotland’s ponds and wild spaces: Donate today and double your gift

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We are thrilled to announce the launch of our latest crowdfunder campaign to raise funds to save Scotland’s ponds and wild spaces.

We want to bring life-changing wildlife habitats to communities across Scotland where many children have never experienced the wonder of discovering a frog, newt or grass snake.

Why Scotland’s amphibians and reptiles need your help now

Scotland’s native amphibians and reptiles are facing a crisis. Common toads have declined by 68% in just 30 years, and many species are disappearing from areas where they once thrived. At the same time, over half of UK children have never seen a frog in the wild, with urban children being particularly disconnected from nature.

Our proven Coalface to Wildspace approach, established in the West Midlands, addresses both these challenges by transforming degraded urban sites into thriving wildlife havens whilst connecting children with nature for the first time.

What your donation will achieve

Every donation will be matched pound for pound – but only if we can demonstrate strong public support.

Our target is £5,000 by the end of July, which becomes £10,000 with match funding. This is enough to:

• Create new wildlife ponds in three Scottish regions: Ayrshire, Lothians, and South Lanarkshire
• Connect hundreds of children with amphibians through hands-on conservation activities
• Restore degraded habitats where native species can breed and thrive
• Build sustainable community engagement around wildlife conservation

Success in action: What we’ve already achieved

In our pilot work in Scotland, children at SiMY Youth Club in Glasgow transformed a neglected area into a thriving wildlife pond. Many had never seen a newt before – now they’re passionate wildlife guardians, checking water quality and monitoring amphibian populations.

Why children and wildlife both benefit

This isn’t just about saving amphibians – it is about creating the next generation of conservationists. Research shows that children who participate in hands-on nature activities are significantly more likely to care for the environment as adults.

Through rolling out Coalface to Wildspace in Scotland, we are recovering wildlife and educating local communities about wild spaces, creating a positive cycle where today’s young pond-dippers become tomorrow’s conservation champions.

Every donation counts – here’s how

Donate today, and together we could achieve:

• £10 provides wildlife identification guides for a classroom
• £25 supports a child’s wildlife discovery session
• £50 provides materials for community habitat creation
• £100 funds professional habitat restoration work

Remember, every £1 donated could become £2 for conservation if we successfully demonstrate public support.

Join our campaign today

Scotland’s amphibians can’t wait. Every day counts in creating the habitats these remarkable creatures need to survive and thrive.

Visit our crowdfunder page now and help us Save Scotland’s Ponds and Wild Spaces.

Your donation today could be the difference between a child’s first magical wildlife encounter and another generation growing up disconnected from nature. Together, we can ensure Scotland’s amphibians have a future – and that future starts with your support.

Donate here – every pound could be doubled through match funding

A Voice for Nature

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Scottish Environment LINK are celebrating ten years of the Nature Champions initiative with an exhibition at the Scottish Parliament!

The Nature Champions initiative exists to encourage MSPs to stand up for Scotland’s threatened and iconic species and habitats, through support from LINK member organisations. Many Nature Champions become a voice for their chosen species or habitat in the Scottish Parliament, and highlight them in debates, or through Parliamentary motions and questions.

Since its launch in 2013, the initiative has gone from strength to strength, with over 173 MSPs over the past decade becoming Nature Champions and asking hundreds of Parliamentary questions and motions in support of their species or habitats.

‘A Voice for Nature’ is an interactive exhibition highlighting some of the great work that has been achieved in these 10 years and will be on display outside the Scottish Parliament from the 28 August – 22 September.

Images and facts about Scottish species and habitats will be displayed alongside Nature Champions case studies and QR codes within the displays will link to short audio descriptions, using the voices of MSP Nature Champions to share information about species and habitats – thereby being a ‘voice for nature’ in the exhibition itself.

Find out more info HERE.