Policies & FAQs

We are committed to protecting the privacy of our supporters and the general public who engage with us. We take our duty to processing your personal data very seriously. This policy tells you how and why we collect information, how we use it and what controls we have in place to protect your personal data.

We may change this document from time to time to reflect the latest view of what we do with your information, scroll to the bottom of the text to see the date of the latest update. 

We are committed to keeping the personal details of our members and supporters safe.

1. Our commitment to your privacy

This policy explains how and why we use your personal data, to ensure that you remain informed and in control of your information.

Any references to Alderney Wildlife Trust, the Trust, or to ‘we’ or ‘us’ refer to:
• Alderney Wildlife Trust. We are a registered charity in Guernsey, our registered charity number is CH261.
• Alderney Wildlife Trust Ltd, our charitable trading company; registered company number 1410. The company operates on behalf of the Alderney Wildlife Trust with its 'Membership' and 'Board' elected by the membership.

For the purpose of this policy the Alderney Wildlife Trust use three key definitions to describe people mentioned in this policy. These are definitions used by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner Guernsey

• ‘Data subject’: this is you, one of our loyal members and supporters. As the data subject, we respect your right to control your data.
• ‘Data controller’: this is us, the Alderney Wildlife Trust. With your permission, we determine why and how your personal data is used (as outlined in this policy).
• ‘Data processor’: this is a person, or organisation, who processes your data on our behalf, with your permission. For example, this might be a mailing house who sends your membership magazine to you, on our behalf (due to the size of our organisation, it’s more cost-effective to outsource ad-hoc and large-scale tasks like this).

If we ever were to work with other organisations or individuals in this way, we will ensure that a written contract is in place to protect your data. No third partiy we work with will ever ‘own’ your data, so you will never hear from them independently and we will ensure that they delete your data from their systems when they have completed the task in hand. We always send your data to partner organisations securely, to minimise the risk of it being intercepted by unknown individuals and/or organisations.

We will never sell your personal data.

Should you wish to find out more about the information we hold about you, or about our privacy policy, please contact us:

Chief Executive Officer
Telephone: 01481822935
Email: admin@alderneywildlife.org
48 Victoria Street, St. Anne, Alderney, GY9 3TA
Our office hours are Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm

N.b. Accuracy

While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information supplied on this site, the Isles of Alderney Wildlife Trust cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions, and makes no warranties representation or undertakings about its content or the content of any other website referred to or accessed by a hypertext link. All information is subject to change without notice.

2. Why do we collect your personal data?

We use your personal data to keep in touch with you. We will only ever collect, store and use your personal data when we have an identified purpose and reason to do so. Further information about why we collect your personal data is outlined below.

a) To administer your Alderney Wildlife Trust membership
We collect your personal data to administer your membership, which may involve:
• Sending you your membership welcome pack when you first join us
• Processing your standing order subscription payments, if you have set this donation process up with us
• Sending you your membership renewal letter
• Getting in touch should there ever be any issues processing your subscription payment

b) To send you items purchased from our online shop, including event bookings and accommodation bookings
We collect your personal data to send you:
• items you have purchased from our online shop
• information about events you have booked onto
• information on an accommodation reservation you have made

c) To send you information about our work and ask for your opinion
We also collect your personal data so that we can send you information about our work that we feel will be of interest to you. This includes your membership magazine, fundraising appeals, events, campaigning opportunities, membership, services, products, newsletter requests, feedback, competitions and other activities, as well as information about other carefully selected organisations that we work in partnership with (such the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts). From time to time, we may also use your personal data to ask for your opinion about our work.

i) Gift membership
If your Wildlife Trust membership was purchased as a gift, we will use the address provided by the purchaser to send you information about our work in the post. This will include a ‘renewal letter’, which we will send you when your membership is due to expire, to see if you would like to continue supporting our charity.

ii) When your membership has ended

Unless we hear from you directly, we will continue to send you information about our work for up to 12 months after your membership has ended. This is just in case your support was cancelled accidentally, by for example changing your bank account details, and you wish to update your details with us.

Your personal data also helps us to get to know you better and to develop a ‘profile’ of you on our secure supporter database. This ‘profile’ enables us to send you the information listed above in a timely and relevant way, to suit you. For example, keeping track of the donations you make to our organisation helps us to send you information about fundraising appeals that we feel you would like to hear about. Likewise, keeping a record of your wildlife interests that you may tell us about in one of our Membership Surveys, helps us to send you relevant project updates.

We use two different lawful bases for processing your data for ‘direct marketing’ purposes:

i) Legitimate interest
This is where we have identified a genuine and legitimate reason for contacting you, which crucially does not override your rights or interests
We use legitimate interest to send you the information listed above by post or telephone (if you are not registered with the Telephone Preference Service, and you have given us your telephone number).

ii) Opt-in consent
This is where you have given us express permission to contact you by particular communication channels.
We use opt-in consent to send you the information listed above by email, text message (SMS) or telephone.

We respect your right to update the way we get in touch with you about our work at any time.

d) To enable you to volunteer with us
If you are a Alderney Wildlife Trust volunteer, we collect your personal data so that we can keep in touch with you about, for example:
• volunteer work programmes
• changes to planned volunteer work programmes that you may be taking part in
• the positive impact you have on our work, by sending you our volunteer newsletter
• dedicated volunteer thank-you events

 

3. What kind of personal data do we collect? How do we collect it?

a) Basic information

We will usually collect basic information about you, including your name, postal address, telephone number, email address and your bank details if you are supporting us financially.
Most of the time, we collect this data from you directly. Sometimes this is in person; other times, it is over the telephone, in writing or through an email. Occasionally we obtain information, such as your telephone number or other contact details, from external sources (only where you have given permission for such information to be shared i.e. telephone directory).

b) Getting to know you better

We also collect information about you that helps us to get to know you better. This may include:
• information about your wildlife interests, which you tell us through our Membership Surveys
• records of donations you’ve made towards fundraising appeals
• your preferences of how you would like us to contact you
• ways you’ve helped us through volunteering your time
• records of events you’ve attended, or campaigns or activities that you’ve been involved in

Sometimes we will collect other information about you such as your date of birth and gender. When we do so, we will be very clear as to why we are collecting such information, and we will only do so with your specific consent and permission.

We may also collect demographic and consumption data generated through geodemographic tools. If you do not wish your data to be collected in any of these ways, or have questions about them, please contact us:

Chief Executive Officer
Telephone: 01481822935
Email: admin@alderneywildlife.org
48 Victoria Street, St. Anne, Alderney, GY9 3TA
Our office hours are Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm.

Other ways in which we collect personal data to get to know you better include:

i) Our website
Our website uses ‘cookies’ to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites.

Our cookies help us:
• Make our website work as you’d expect
• Remember your settings during and between visits
• Improve the speed/security of the site
• Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook
• Continuously improve our website for you
The section of this policy that lists the cookies used on our website is currently under review.

c) Sensitive personal data
We do not normally collect or store sensitive personal data (such as information relating to health, beliefs or political affiliation) about supporters and members. However, there are some situations where this will occur.
When we do so, we will be very clear as to why we are collecting such information, and we will only do so with your specific consent and permission. In these situations, we collect the data from you directly.

If you are a volunteer then we may collect extra information about you, for example:
• references
• criminal records checks
• details of emergency contacts
• medical conditions

We may also collect sensitive personal data if you have an accident on one of our reserves in the completion of an accident and/or incident report. This information will be retained for legal reasons, for safeguarding purposes and to protect us (including in the event of an insurance or legal claim). If this does occur, we’ll take extra care to ensure your privacy rights are protected.

d) Children and young people

In line with data protection law, we will not collect, store or process your personal details if you are under 13 years of age; unless we have the express permission from your parent or guardian to do so.
If we have the permission of your parent or guardian, and you are a Wildlife Watch member, have a Watch membership or are part of a Family membership we will capture your date of birth at the point of joining. This is so that we can send you information that we feel is suitable to your age.
Our Safeguarding policy is currently under review. For further information please contact our Chief Executive Officer.

 

4. How do we store your data?

a) Security

All of the personal data we process is processed by our staff here in Alderney which is situated outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). The handling of your data will be in with laws and the guidance of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, and those of Alderney (should they differ).

Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems and we control who has access to information (using both physical and electronic means). Our staff receive data protection training and we have a set of detailed data protection procedures which personnel are required to follow when handling personal data.

b) Payment security

Should the Alderney Wildlife Trust does not directly request financial data online. If you use a credit card to donate, purchase a membership of the AWT, make a booking with the Field Centre or purchase something online we will pass your credit card details securely to our payment providers PayPal.

Alderney Wildlife Trust complies with the payment card industry data security standard (PCI-DSS) published by the PCI Security Standards Council, and will never store card details.

Of course, we cannot guarantee the security of your home computer or the internet, and any online communications (e.g. information provided by email or our website) are at the user’s own risk.

c) CCTV Some of our premises have CCTV and you may be recorded when you visit them. CCTV is there to help provide security and to protect both you and Alderney Wildlife Trust. CCTV will only be viewed when necessary (e.g. to detect or prevent crime) and footage is only stored temporarily. Unless it is flagged for review CCTV will be recorded over.

Alderney Wildlife Trust complies with the Guernsey CCTV Code of Practice, where ever it has active CCTV recording and we put up notices, so you know when CCTV is in use.

d) Data retention policy

We will only use and store information for as long as it required for the purposes it was collected for. We continually review what information we hold, and delete what is no longer required.

For further information, please see our Data Retention Policy.

 

5. Your rights

We respect your right to control your data. Your rights include:

a) The right to be informed
This privacy notice outlines how we capture, store and use your data. If you have any questions about any elements of this policy, please contact us.
b) The right of access
If you wish to obtain a record of the personal data we hold about you, through a Subject Access Request, we will respond within one month.
c) The right to rectification
If we have captured information about you that is inaccurate or incomplete, we will update it.
d) The right to erase
You can ask us to remove or randomise your personal details from our records.
e) The right to restrict processing
You can ask us to stop using your personal data.
f) The right to data portability
You can ask to obtain your personal data from us for your own purposes.
g) The right to object
You can ask to be excluded from marketing activity.
h) Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling

We respect your right not to be subject to a decision that is based on automated processing. For more information on your individual rights, please see the Information Commissioner’s Office.

 

6. Making a complaint

Alderney Wildlife Trust want to exceed your expectation in everything we do. However, we know that there may be times when we do not meet our own high standards. When this happens, we want to hear about it, in order to deal with the situation as quickly as possible and put measures in place to stop it happening again.

We take complaints very seriously and we treat them as an opportunity to develop our approach. This is why we are always very grateful to hear from people who are willing to take the time to help us improve.

Our policy is:

• To provide a fair complaints procedure that is clear and easy to use for anyone wishing to make a complaint.
• To publicise the existence of our complaints procedure so that people know how to contact us to make a complaint.
• To make sure everyone in our organisation knows what to do if a complaint is received.
• To make sure all complaints are investigated fairly and in a timely way.
• To make sure that complaints are, wherever possible, resolved and that relationships are repaired.
• To learn from complaints and feedback to help us to improve what we do.
Confidentiality

All complaint information will be handled sensitively, in line with relevant data protection requirements.
Responsibility

Overall responsibility for this policy and its implementation lies with our Chief Executive Officer

For further information on how to make a complaint, please see our Complaints Policy.

Information Commissioner’s Office
For further assistance with complaints regarding your data, please contact the Information Commissioner’s Office, whose remit covers the UK, or the Guernsey Data Protection Commissioner:

St Martin's House,
Le Bordage
Peter Port
Guernsey Telephone: +44 (0) 1481 742074
GY1 1BR

Telephone: +44 (0)1481 742074

Website: https://dataci.gg/

Email: enquiries@odpa.gg 

7. Leaving our website

We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any other websites linked to our website. If you have followed a link from this website to another website you may be supplying information to a third party.

 

8. Copyright

All material present on AWT controlled websites is the copyright of the Alderney Wildlife Trust unless otherwise stated. Most images and illustrations are credited and are copyright of the photographer or illustrator. You are permitted to view the contents of this site for your personal use or private study and to save one copy of such reasonable extracts for your personal use or private study.
Except as expressible agreed herein, it is strictly forbidden to copy any material from this site for commercial use (other than as necessary for the purpose of viewing the site in the course of business).

 

9. Get in touch

Should you wish to find out more about the information we hold about you, or about our privacy policy, please contact us:

Chief Executive Officer
Telephone: 01481822935
Email: admin@alderneywildlife.org
48 Victoria Street, St. Anne, Alderney, GY9 3TA
Our office hours are Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm.

 

Important - Notification of privacy changes

This Privacy Policy was updated April 2018. We update this policy periodically. If Alderney Wildlife Trust decides to change its privacy policy it will post any changes on its website under the section entitled ‘Privacy Policy’  

We encourage commenting and love to hear your thoughts, see your photos and share your experiences. We do however have some guidelines in order to ensure that you have a good experience on our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter Pages:

- We ask that you stay on topic, respect other people’s opinions and avoid profanity, offensive or defamatory statements and illegal content.

- Comments which include bullying or advertising or which are considered "spamming" (posting unrelated content or regularly posting duplicate posts) will be removed and in extreme circumstances the person responsible may be blocked from commenting.

We aim to keep our Pages as friendly as possible, however if you see anything you think is inappropriate you can tell Facebook using the "Flag" option, report a post on Instagram or report a tweet on Twitter.

Anything which you submit to the Facebook or Twitter page may be shared elsewhere in whole or in part, either by us or by other users.

Please note that our social media pages are mainly managed during the week, during office hours. 

We will always do our best to help anyone with an identification.  Please feel free to contact us at admin@alderneywildlife.org or call 01481 822935. 

You can also submit a sighting here.

For live animals - Alderney Animal Welfare is the veterinary association on Alderney and they do an excellent job with limited resources dealing with injured wildlife.  You can contact them on alderneyanimalwelfare@outlook.com or by calling 01481 822616. If you can't get through then please contact us and we will do our best to assist.

It helps if you can provide:

1. A description of what you saw
2. The location and time

Dead animals – we do keep records on wildlife discovered dead as this can provide important information. To report this please contact us 

It's important to always consider the wildlife you may impact by cutting back vegetation, this will vary based on the species of plant - even brambles can play host to a wide range of species. Key times to avoid are from early March to late September, when birds are not only nesting but also need the food provided by many plants to help feed young. 
When cutting back between September to March you need to think about if the plants could be home to hibernating hedgehogs or bats.  In the case of hedgehogs, low growing shrubs and hedging with lots of leaf litter provide ideal hibernation sites. Whereas for bats established trees with clefts or even deep bark can provide wintering roosts.

We will assist with individual advice where we can so please do contact us.

Ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus) is a fungus which originated in Asia, where it causes little harm to native trees. However, its introduction to Europe about 30 years ago has devastated the European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) because our native ash species did not evolve with the fungus and it has no natural defense against it. Dieback was first recorded in Alderney in 2018, believed to have been introduced by windblown spores from France. It is now found widely across ash trees on the island.  Ash is the most common native species of tree on Alderney after Rusty Sallow.

Ash dieback can affect ash trees of all ages. Younger trees succumb to the disease quicker but in general, all affected trees will have these symptoms:

• Leaves develop dark patches in the summer.
• Leaves then wilt and discolour to black. Leaves might shed early.
• Dieback of the shoots and leaves visible in the summer.
• Lesions develop where branches meet the trunk. These are often diamond-shaped and dark brown.
• Inner bark looks brownish-grey under the lesions.
• New growth from previously dormant buds further down the trunk. This is known as epicormic growth and is a common response to stress in trees.

The AWT, in conjunction with the States of Alderney, is monitoring the spread of Ash dieback and will be seeking to develop a policy for managing the situation over the next 10 years.

The Asian hornet is an aggressive predator of many types of insect, but on average 30% of its diet is made up of honeybees. The Asian hornet is therefore a major threat to native invertebrates. It was first found in Alderney in 2017 and the States of Alderney are encouraging anyone who thinks they have seen an Asian hornet or found an Asian hornet nest to report it to the State’s Agricultural Team jamie.laband@gov.gg. The AWT support the states team in their constant search for nests and often work in conjunction to help access and destroy less accessible ones.

Asian hornets have a distinctive velvety black/dark brown thorax. The abdomen is also black/brown with the abdominal segments bordered with a fine yellow band, only the fourth abdominal segment is almost entirely a yellow-orange. The legs are black/brown with yellow ends and the head is black with an orange-yellow face. A typical worker hornet is approximately 22mm (1 inch) in length. You can find further information on the biology and life cycle of the Asian hornet from the National Bee Unit.

As with bees and wasps, the Asian hornet has a painful sting. The sting of an Asian hornet is no more harmful than that of a bee or wasp. However Asian hornets be more aggressive than most other indigenous bee and wasp species if their nest is threatened so it is important not to deliberately provoke them. 

Visit our invasive species page to find out more how species like the Asian Hornet are affecting Alderney.

The greatest level of protection currently offered to Alderney’s natural environment comes from the Building Development Control (Alderney), 2002 Law which established the Alderney Land Use Plan.

You can find full details on the States of Alderney Website, where you can access both the law (and supporting ordinances), as well as the detailed land use plan itself.  Core to Alderney’s planning law is the creation of a ‘designated area’ (greenbelt) which protects around three quarters of the island from major development impacts, unless there are ‘exceptional’ circumstances.  The mechanisms through which development is filtered, and the habitats and in the future species which development must consider when proposed, are all laid out within the Land Use Plan.

If you have any specific questions about planning and the environment we will do our best to respond, please contact us.

The AWT believes that a clean, healthy and biologically diverse marine environment is essential to sustain long-term, local fisheries within Alderney’s territorial waters. The AWT recommends the implementation of an ecosystem fisheries and conservation management-based approach, for Alderney’s fisheries. It is vital to maintain marine ecosystem services, habitats, food webs, and fish stocks, whilst considering natural and human-induced impacts within the island’s territorial waters.

This approach should look to follow key sustainable fisheries recommendations from Greener UK (Greener UK, 2017) and the UK Wildlife Trusts(TWT, 2017), and also relevant descriptors from the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive, to achieve Good Environmental Status, for Alderney’s marine environment (JNCC, 2018). 

It should be recognised, that where key information is lacking (i.e. fish stock information), a precautionary management-based approach should be used.

Yes, so long as they are kept under control, particularly around the reserves ponds and the bird hides.
Please be aware of grazing cattle and electric fences, we are happy for the public to walk through the grazing plots and do not require dogs to be kept on the lead, however they must be kept under control at all times.  Our cattle are old and tend to be uninterested in walkers or dogs but may respond if dogs approach them.

If using the beaches during the bird breeding season (March to July) please be aware that the areas around the high tide mark can provide breeding habitat for wading birds such as ringed plover and oystercatcher. It is an offence under the law for anyone to knowingly disturb a breeding bird, so please keep animals under control. This applies in particular to Clonque and Platte Saline.