Inspiring journey behind Cuan Wildlife Rescue draws packed crowd

From being the only girl at a boys’ boarding school - where she admitted she must have been the world's worst tomboy - to hitchhiking alone across South Africa, Pakistan and India, Megan’s early life was defined by resilience, curiosity and a refusal to conform.

Renamed “Megan” simply because there were too many Margarets in one office, her varied path through charity work and social work was marked by humour as well as hardship, including being first on the scene of a fatal road accident that profoundly altered her outlook on life.

That turning point led Megan and her husband John (known as Morris) to Scotland, where they renovated a tumbledown house on a remote island and deepened their passion for animals and birds as sentient beings. While there, the couple began rescuing injured seabirds - quiet, practical acts of compassion that sowed the seeds of something much larger.

When the family moved to Much Wenlock in 1989 and discovered there were no dedicated facilities for injured wildlife, Megan simply began taking animals in. What followed, as the audience learned, was the steady and determined growth of Cuan Wildlife Rescue from a cottage operation into a fully-fledged charity, with Morris tirelessly building facilities and managing finances behind the scenes.

Megan spoke movingly of loss, particularly Morris’s death in 2006, and of the burden - and purpose - of carrying on alone. Yet the evening was ultimately a celebration: of a life very well lived, of community support, and of continuity, as daughter Anna now leads Cuan Wildlife Rescue from its new home at The Signals.

Often funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and always deeply emotional, Megan Morris-Jones’s talk left the audience inspired, and reminded that lasting change often begins with noticing the vulnerable and deciding, quite simply, to care.