Not an expert, just paying attention

Jazz White runs a variety of social media pages called White's Wildlife Watch, leads eco groups at two schools, volunteers at Cleethorpes Wildlife Rescue and Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, delivers wildlife based talks and activities for Scouts and Women’s Institute groups, and keeps a camera pointed at the badger who crosses his garden most nights. We sat down with him to talk about Planet Protectors, Franklin NEWT, the wildlife already on our doorstep, and the quiet community of people in North East Lincolnshire who are noticing it for the rest of us.

“Someone asked me before, what is it?” Jazz says, when I ask him to explain White's Wildlife Watch. “It is not really a thing. Maybe it is more of, it is me.”

That is probably the most honest description anyone could give. White's Wildlife Watch is the umbrella name Jazz uses to share everything he does with local nature. The eco group he helps run at New Waltham Academy. The one he has set up at Franklin College. The volunteering with Cleethorpes Wildlife Rescue. The photos he takes with the camera he got for Christmas. The clips from the wildlife camera at the bottom of his garden. One page, one name, but really a collection of quiet, steady, locally rooted work that has built up over time.

From Planet Protectors to the Hedgehog Friendly School Award

Jazz spent six years at New Waltham Academy, where the wildlife and sustainability side of his work really began. He helped set up an eco-group called Planet Protectors, a name the pupils chose themselves. The logo, a small tree with a love heart on it, came from the children too. By the time he left last summer to move across to Franklin College, he had become the school's sustainability and climate change lead.

Leaving did not mean stopping. “I said to the head teacher, I loved Planet Protectors. I started it. I ran it for six years. We have done some amazing things. Could I come back every week to continue running it?”

They said yes. Every Thursday, an hour a week, Jazz still returns to New Waltham to run the group. Planet Protectors has one pupil representative from each class, chosen through something close to a school election. Each child has to say why they want to be involved, even if it is only a sentence. The group changes every year now, rather than holding the same seats through to year six, so more children get a turn.

Some of the bigger ideas are Jazz's inventions. Nothing in a Wrapper Day is one of them. “Imagine how amazing it would be if every student in the school, and there are about 380 students, did not bring at least one less item in a wrapper in their packed lunch or break time snack in a wrapper.” The Planet Protectors go round the classes at the end of the day and do a tally. Each year, more children take part. This year they raised the bar and asked the bigger question. Did you bring nothing in a wrapper at all?

The current school-wide project is the Hedgehog Friendly School Award. A wildlife corner has gone in on the field. Hedgehog houses, log piles, saplings from the Woodland Trust and tulip bulbs from a community distribution in Grimsby are all in. Activities earn points, points add up to bronze, silver and gold. They are working their way up to gold.

NEWT at Franklin

At Franklin College, where Jazz now teaches maths and leads on sustainability, the eco group is called NEWT (Nature, Environment & Wildlife Team). It runs inside the college's Wednesday PPD sessions, the personal and professional development slot that covers everything from subject support to crochet, Dungeons and Dragons, and Jazz's small group of students interested in local wildlife.

NEWT is newer, and by design more student-led than Planet Protectors. The college students chose the areas of local wildlife they wanted to focus on, looked into what is at risk of decline, and pulled their research together into a campaign. That campaign was part of the Helios event at Grimsby Minster, alongside the Green Influencers project. Josh, the Cleethorpes Coastal Ranger, is coming in to visit them soon.

“We are not experts. We are just very enthusiastic people who are constantly learning.”

The wildlife already on our doorstep

Ask Jazz what is actually here, and the list gets long quickly. The main stretch of Cleethorpes seafront. The quieter section behind the Boating Lake. The sand dunes beyond, which are a National Nature Reserve. Tetney Marshes and the waders that work them. Weelsby Woods. Bradley Woods, which he describes like someone who has spent a lot of time in it. The River Freshney. People's Park. The fields in between.

“The actual abundance of wildlife around here is incredible,” he says.

The point he keeps circling back to is that most of it does not require specialist knowledge or equipment to see. The wildlife camera at the bottom of his garden records a badger coming through most nights. Foxes, mice and the occasional rat too. When the badger first turned up on the footage, his wife said it was the most excited she had ever seen him. He is almost as excited now, a few hundred nights of footage later. He still checks the memory card every couple of days, and most mornings he sits at the kitchen table with his son to go through what the camera has picked up.

Once you start paying attention, you notice more. A dandelion stops being a weed and becomes the first real food source for bees coming out of hibernation. A patch of nettles turns into habitat for butterflies, and, if you have the patience, homemade fertiliser.

Not an expert, and that is the point

The thing Jazz wants people to know most is that none of this is gatekept. He comes back to it several times across the conversation.

It is not false modesty. It is a deliberate stance. He has noticed that people who are interested in wildlife sometimes feel like they cannot join in, either because they do not know the names for things or because they are worried about being corrected. He does not want that to be the experience. If someone asks him what a bird is, and he does not know, he says so. Gets a book out. Looks it up with them.

Jim, the Canoe River Cleaner, says something similar. So do The Bearded Birders. Aaron Goss, who founded Cleethorpes Wildlife Rescue and has now taken it into Floral Hall in People's Park, he has built the rescue up over years in his own back garden before the scale of it outgrew the space. None of them got where they are by being experts from the start. They got there by being interested, wanting to make a difference and by keeping going.

The quiet community around him

Jazz is quick to name other people when asked about collaborators. Aaron and the team at Cleethorpes Wildlife Rescue, now settling into Floral Hall. Jim, the Canoe River Cleaner, whose tree planting projects Jazz has joined and whose friendship has grown out of a shared love of local wildlife. Josh, the Cleethorpes Coastal Ranger, and the DUNE project he leads, Dynamic Understanding of the Natural Environment, monitoring the wildlife of the Cleethorpes dunes and running guided walks along the Boating Lake. Sarah Palmer from The House with the Blue Door and Green Futures. Zac from PickWalks, who is out most days picking litter and quietly making it look normal. The Green Influencers who worked with the NEWT students on their Helios campaign.

It is a pattern he notices, rather than a network he has designed. “There are so many people doing good things,” he says. “If everyone continues and keeps building that big community and getting more people involved, I think it is a good thing.”

How more people get involved

The question I finish with is practical. What could get more people involved?

Jazz does not reach for strategy. He says the best thing is the thing already happening. Keep doing it. Keep being welcoming. Make it normal enough, or cool enough, that the people who feel slightly embarrassed about being seen with binoculars watching birds, or carrying a litter picker, or crouching down to photograph a dandelion, stop being embarrassed.

“If we see all these groups and communities and people linking up together, doing good things, enjoying doing the good things, and kind of shouting about it, and being proud to say, this is what we are doing today, more and more people want to get involved.”

That is pretty much the theory of change behind White's Wildlife Watch. Show what is here. Make it easy to join in. Be generous with not knowing the answers.

There is a badger crossing a garden on a quiet street in North East Lincolnshire. There is a hedgehog friendly primary school in New Waltham. There is a wildlife rescue taking shape inside Floral Hall in People's Park. There is a sustainability lead at Franklin College who arrived at all of this sideways, through his dad's bird books and his first garden and six years of running an eco-group. There is a Facebook page where he shares what he finds.

None of it is really a thing, if you ask him. Put it all together, though, and it is starting to look like one.

You can find White's Wildlife Watch on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Facebook - www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61580225404384
Instagram - www.instagram.com/whites_wildlife_watch
YouTube - https://youtube.com/@wildlifewhite?si=dCy8yj6fwotIVbR3
TikTok - @whites.wildlife.watch

If you know a community group, local organisation or person in North East Lincolnshire whose quiet, meaningful work deserves a wider audience, we would love to hear from you at jose@our-future.io.