Wildwood Trust: 2019 - What a Year!

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Wildwood - 2019 Highlights

What a year we've had. Thank you all for visiting and supporting Wildwood in 2019. With your help, we're looking forward to continuing to protect, conserve and rewild native British wildlife in 2020.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Here are some of our highlights from 2019 (in no particular order)...

Wilding Kent

Two Wilding Officers were appointed – roles jointly funded by Wildwood and Kent Wildlife Trust. The roles will take the lead in developing collaborative conservation projects throughout Kent, including the reintroduction of the red-billed chough.

Dormice Conservation

Successful breeding season for hazel dormice. 16 of the 22 dormice released as part of the National dormouse project were bred at Wildwood – making a very significant contribution to dormouse conservation.

Tough Mudder

Wildwood staff got wet and muddy in Surrey to raise money for wildlife conservation. One of us even fell into a swamp.

Wildwood Watch

We launched Wildwood Watch; a nature awareness project at our Kent park to raise the profile of native flora and fauna thriving in the park – nest box cameras and bird feeders the first in a series of public engagement activities.

Rewilding Debate

Laura Gardner, our Head of Conservation presented at Christchurch College Canterbury in the first in a series of Rewilding Debates.

Lynx Kittens

We built a new lynx enclosure and welcomed two new lynx kittens to our Kent park. They both settled in very quickly!

White-Clawed Crayfish

Our park at Wildwood Escot hosted a white-clawed crayfish conservation planning meeting with colleagues from Bristol Zoo, Paignton Zoo and the Environment Agency to discuss developing conservation breeding tanks at Escot.

Red Squirrel Walkthrough

One our most ambitious projects was completed and we opened our new Red Squirrel Walkthrough in the Spring. It's taken some time for the residents to get used to their surroundings, but they're now very active.

Bat Filming

BBC Scotland came to Wildwood to film our team of bat experts and their activities in the rescue and rehab of native bats.

Christmas Grotto

We would like to thank everyone who visited our grotto this year at Wildwood Kent. It was the best ever and we look forward to seeing you all again in 2020!

New Birds

Our Mandarin ducks moved from the crane enclosure to the Red Squirrel Walkthrough along with some black-necked pheasants.

Red Squirrel Workshop

Wildwood is a leader in the field of red squirrel conservation breeding and hosted a training workshop on the captive breeding of the red squirrel for reintroduction. The workshop brought together red squirrel experts to present on best practice husbandry, disease surveillance, population management and reintroduction guidelines.

Flo The Arctic Fox

One of our resident Arctic foxes, Bard, who moved to Scotland last year fathered a daughter who is now at our Kent park with her uncle Teddy and aunt Lyra. She's very playful!

Wildcat Babies

Scottish Wildcats bred successfully again this year at Wildwood – directly contributing to the conservation breeding project for the species.

Pine Marten Monitoring

Two of our conservation officers assisted the Gloucester Wildlife Trust to carry out post release monitoring of pine martens released into the Forest of Dean as part of a National pine marten conservation project.