Bedfordshire Youth Rangers August 2022

Bedfordshire Youth Rangers August 2022

It's been another couple of busy months for the Bedfordshire Youth Rangers across the county, writes Communities Officer Sarah Cowling

It is a privilege and honour to work with young people who care so passionately for the local environment and are doing their part to help out.  Over the last few months we have done some removal of invasive species – including bracken pulling at Cooper’s Hill and ragwort pulling both at our Totternhoe Reserve and most recently for Flitwick Town Council at Flitwick Manor Park. We saw several cinnabar moth caterpillars whilst working so left those plants for them to kindly ‘remove’ for us.

Most recently the Bedfordshire Youth Rangers spent a morning spreading 'green hay' in the south Paddock at Blow's Down. The hay was cut from our wildflower-rich meadow the previous week. Spreading the cut hay across the paddocks will hopefully result in increasing the diversity of wildflowers here too. We'll look forward to seeing what shoots up there next year. 

The hours spent discovering our local nature reserves and taking part in practical conservation are counted each time and go towards John Muir Awards.  At our most recent session four of our Youth Rangers received their first Discovery Award Certificates – well done and thank you!

Youth Ranger John Muir
Youth Ranger

At this session said goodbye to Ethan who is heading off to uni to study Ecology in the hope to follow a career in conservation. Some may remember Ethan as our Jon Smith Award recipient at last year’s AGM which recognises outstanding volunteers. Ethan has been a member of Youth Rangers both here and in Peterborough and that was just the beginning, he has put in many volunteer hours for us in various guises - he is going to be missed! We wish his all the very best on his new adventures, I’m sure we’ll hear from him again.

Volunteer extraordinaire, and right-hand man at these sessions, Nigel has also made the difficult decision to step down in this role. Nigel will still be very active in conservation in the local area and educating the ecologists of the future. Thank you Nigel for all your commitment and dedication in making this world a better place. We'll miss you but, like Ethan, wish you all the very best with your future endeavours. 

Youth rangers after bracken pulling at Coopers Hill

PJB Photography

While it has been a busy summer for the Bedfordshire Youth Rangers we are also excited to announce that there is a newly formed Luton group of Youth Rangers. If you are or know of a young person of secondary school age (11-18) who has a keen interest in wildlife and would like to make a difference in their local area please contact Matt.Sutcliffe@wildlifebcn.org (Luton) or Sarah.cowling@wildlifebcn.org (Bedfordshire) for more details.

The dates for upcoming sessions will be released shortly.

In the meantime you can find out more about Youth Rangers here: Youth Rangers | Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs & Northants (wildlifebcn.org)

Thank you, Sarah