As the name suggests, Cherry Hinton Chalk Pits is a former chalk quarry that now provides excellent habitat for a huge variety of wildlife.

For the past decade, our Wider Countryside Team and their volunteers have been hard at work, recording plants and invertebrates in the East Pit. This has included laying out quadrats, pitfall trapping and even a technique called ant-baiting.

The results of the surveys have shown that chalk vegetation is returning to a site that was being overtaken by the invasive buddleia scrub. This plant is good news for butterflies, but can be bad news for other plant species that struggle to compete.

Invertebrate surveys have allowed us to record a vast number of species on the site, including 134 species of spider.

The attached report gives more information of the studies at the site.