Ranger Team During Lockdown

While lockdown has meant difficult and unusual times for many people work has continued at the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) to ensure it is a safe and enjoyable place for the public and wildlife alike.

The reduced footfall within the parks has afforded the ranger team the opportunity to carry out some much needed improvement works to the Leete path at Loggerheads Country Park. These works have now provided a smooth and accessible surface all the way down to the road, which now gives much better access to Devils gorge. There has also been plenty of work carried out resurfacing and expanding the car parks at Moel Famau, as well as introducing new parking ticket machines which accept card payments. Hopefully these improvements will make the publics return to the park an even smoother and more enjoyable experience. Fencing works have been undertaken around the country park to protect the fragile path from erosion due to heavy footfall. Along with this, boundary fence improvements have been carried out to help prevent dogs entering neighbouring farmland and disturbing livestock. But please remember that dogs must be kept under control at all times.

The ranger team have put a lot of energy into improving the AONB for the benefit of wildlife. We set about doing this clearing overgrown sites and using conservation grazing to manage these locations, our plan is for these to return to productive wildflower meadows with a much greater species richness and as such are really looking forward to beginning our species monitoring to watch the progress over the coming years. At Loggerheads Country Park work has been carried out to open up sections of the limestone pavement to allow more light in and create suitable habitat to benefit a huge variety of species of plants, reptiles, and mammals. There has also been a program of bird nest box improvements and replacements across the country park, this included a survey of the species which had been using them and an evaluation of possible improvements. Finally, the ranger team have been working with local communities and the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust (ARC) to regenerate existing ponds and create new ponds for the benefit of many species but with a focus on the Great Crested Newt.