Do Good, Feel Good: Volunteering with Friends of Whitehawk Hill
Volunteers are vital, and throughout 2025, some of the team at East Brighton Trust will be casting a light on the brilliant community groups that exist in East and North Brighton by volunteering and writing all about the experience in our new blog series ‘Do Good, Feel Good’.
There are so many benefits to volunteering, and by helping to support worthwhile causes and people in need, you’re almost certainly doing yourself a favour as well as making a difference locally.
Connecting with your community by volunteering can mean learning new skills, gaining knowledge, and can give a new sense of purpose and belonging, while improving your health and wellbeing.
Last Saturday, Beki and Faith from the team at East Brighton Trust headed east to volunteer with the Friends of Whitehawk Hill.
Whitehawk Hill supports chalk grassland, with many special plants and insects that live only in this Priority Habitat. Going back a century, Whitehawk Hill was all open grassland, with no trees or shrubs apart from some gorse, kept open by grazing animals.
When the grazing stopped much of this grassland was lost to scrub and species-poor woodland, a process that resulted in a loss of biodiversity.
Over 70% of the countries chalk grassland has been lost in the last hundred years.
On Saturday, we met with Richard Bickers and the Friends of Whitehawk Hill volunteers whose aim is to conserve the grassland by removing some of the scrub and trees.
Richard works locally as a consultant ecologist, and he told us how he and some volunteers have been working to conserve the chalk grassland for about the last 7 years, to try and ensure that its plants and rare species can continue to thrive on the hill. He told us:
“We’re not trying to get it back to how it was, we are trying to conserve the remaining areas of chalk grassland but we’ll be keeping some of the scrub, woodland and trees. Sheep have been re-introduced to graze on the hill to control the scrub, especially where we’ve cut it, and improve the condition of the grassland.”.
“We are mostly doing scrub cutting and removal at this time of year, especially from in and around the chalk grassland”.
One of the volunteers told me that as well as volunteering for Friends of Whitehawk Hill, she also volunteers as a sheep lookerer when they come to the hill in the spring to graze.
Sheep-lookering involves checking on the sheep twice a day to check they aren’t injured and to keep an eye on their welfare, reporting any issues to the council ranger.
The sheep are an essential part of the grassland management, including scrub control.
Richard leads the bi-monthly team of volunteers, and once on the hill, he introduced us to loppers, tree poppers, mattocks, saws, and other tools .
Our first job was to cut away some sycamore regrowth, as well as removing non-native cotoneaster, a garden plant that is invasive on chalk grassland sites.
The work was surprisingly satisfying, despite the uneven ground and wondering a few times if plummeting down the hill might be on the cards. Glad to say, that didn’t happen.
The panoramic views across East Brighton were stunning, and even with grey skies and freezing temperatures, there was something quite extraordinary about being there.
Perhaps it was partly to do with the hill’s history, and more recently, how the much-loved and well-known hill was saved from the threat of development proposals by many.
Richard’s knowledge and passion for the species there were vast and fascinating.
“Horseshoe vetch, which only grows in chalk and other limestone grassland, is essential for creatures like the chalkhill and the adonis blue butterfly whose caterpillars only feed on this plant.”
Despite the cold, this volunteering experience was a brilliant way to meet people and connect with Whitehawk Hill, and we have agreed we would love to return for more conservation volunteering with Friends of Whitehawk Hill in the future.
If you are interested in volunteering with Friends of Whitehawk Hill, you can email Richard at friendswhitehawkhill@gmail.com.