The Welsh Government has awarded Monmouthshire CC £1m local transport grant for 2017/18 preparatory work for the Llanfoist Active Travel Bridge, works on Lion Street and Frogmore Street, Abergavenny, to improve walking and cycling, improvements to the Wyebridge junction at Monmouth, and a new zebra crossing at Wyesham.

Tasked with improving our hedgerows, collecting valuable habitat information and encouraging people to take an interest in nature, The Long Forest is a natural heritage project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.  Keep Wales Tidy will be working with volunteers and landowners in Monmouthshire – contact thomas.ward-jackson@keepwalestidy.cymru (07766 754894) if you would like to volunteer for surveying or practical work or are an interested landowner.

The speaker at the Monmouthshire Meadows group AGM and Spring Get-together at Llanishen Village Hall on 26 April (7pm) will be local ecologist and author Dr George Peterken.  The event is open to non-members (£3.50 for the meeting, £17 with buffet), but please book with marilyn@monmouthshiremeadows.org.uk.  MMG has leased 24 acres of grassland, bog and woodland at Wet Meadow, Trellech, from the County Council and is managing it jointly with Gwent Wildlife Trust and help from an AONB grant.

A report for the Institute of Welsh Affairs – http://www.iwa.wales/news/2017/04/re-energising-wales-funding-renewable-energy-projects-wales-report/ – highlights missed opportunities and barriers to accessing funding for renewable energy projects.  The report points to a need for a comprehensive Welsh Government sustainable energy strategy, more lobbying of the UK Government on subsidies, and more community-owned RE schemes.  It also regrets the investment of local government pension funds in fossil fuel companies rather than RE.

Prompt action by NRW and Welsh Water appears to have substantially contained a serious environmental incident arising from a failed lagoon that might have discharged 450,000 litres of slurry into a tributary of the Honddu in the Llanthony valley near Abergavenny.  The Honddu flows into the Monnow which joins the Wye at Monmouth.