"I was at Vallis Vale today with a group from Sherborne U3A. As you can see from the photo someone had had a bonfire on the unconformity surface!
I was wondering if we might approach this through local school(s) if there is a geology dept or through geography or science departments and try and get the staff on board to explain why this shouldn’t happen. When I was on the site in the summer doing some conservation work some of the young people were interested in what we were doing but had no idea why it was an important site until I told them. Can we get the young people to ’own’ the site and take care of it or has this already been tried?"
Response from the Somerset Earth Science Centre
"A difficult one. We do discuss the importance of this site with our school visitors. Any signage on this site has been systematically vandalized. At the moment we are working with the Mendip AONB on a lottery bid to get some leaflets/trails done for Vallis. We will hear about whether this is successful this month. Plus we have our regular public events taking people through Vallis to tell them why it is such an important area e.g. the walk at our annual geology festival Mendip Rocks!. So the whole thing is ongoing. However, teenagers will always claim out of the way areas as their own. We periodically sweep the area and clear it up, and I know local people will do the same and lovely geologists like yourself do blitzs on these sites too. We all do our bit."
Please send us your views and suggestions.
1 comment:
Put up a sign but i doubt those responsible will take the slightest notice.. The 'Geological researchers' (?? !!!) fossil collectors or simple idiots who have hammered away almost all of the tiny but really important patches of yellow sediment still stuck onto the horizontal unconformity surface might just be put off resorting to such appealing acts of pure vandalism. Sometimes I wonder the wisdom of exposing so much.
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