Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust is a long term member of the partnership of organisations who helped create Charnwood Forest Geopark. Part of our National Lottery Heritage Fund support goes to the Trust to fund work within the Geopark area. Isabel Raval, Charnwood Forest Regional Park Project and Surveys Officer has written this article, reviewing all the excellent work that has been undertaken in the Geopark over the past year.
The beginning of 2024 saw us wrapping up our three-year Grasslands Project, which had been focused on the restoration and good conservation management of over 50 hectares of Charnwood Forest’s neutral meadows and acid grasslands. The results from the monitoring surveys of the project sites saw a trend for improved condition of the grassland, suggesting that the implemented changes in management had been beneficial. Many of the landowners involved plan to continue with the recommended management from the project and so we hope to be able to return to these sites in the future to monitor the longer-term progress.
Wildlife Trust volunteers working in an area of grassland.
For the rest of the year, our focus shifted to be fully on our Wildlife Recording Project, which aims to engage and connect people with the distinctive habitats and wildlife around the Charnwood Forest Geopark and inspire more people to take up regular recording of the wildlife they see here.
We started off the warmer months collaborating with the Ancient Woodland Inventory Update, taking place in Leicestershire and Rutland in 2024, by helping provide training for volunteers to carry out the necessary woodland surveys, held in Burroughs Wood in Ratby. The training saw volunteers learning not only about which woodland flora species are indicative of ancient woodland, but also which other man-made features such as tree management and earthworks can serve as clues. Charnwood Forest is host to some fantastic woodlands (there are few things more magical in the spring than a carpet of Wood Anemone and native Bluebell!) so it was a real pleasure to take volunteers out to survey some of these and contribute to this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, having been 40 years since the previous Inventory was created.
Throughout 2024, we continued holding other species identification training sessions, covering the topics of butterflies, bryophytes, ferns, meadow botany, molluscs, fungi, reptiles, bats and moths. At these training days it is always a joy to be able to provide new learning experiences for attendees and gain such enthusiasm from the experts in these fields.
In June, we started up a new Wildlife Recording Group for volunteers which has seen us visit many of the wonderful nature reserves, footpaths and country parks around Charnwood Forest. So far, we have held 17 of these field meetings and submitted well over 1000 wildlife records to NatureSpot. Of course, a positive side effect of starting this group has been introducing volunteers to new locations around the Geopark and meeting fellow wildlife enthusiasts.
Wildlife Trust volunteer holding two moths.
Other activities included setting up a reptile survey transect in the autumn at one of our nature reserves. We managed to complete two surveys which yielded some Common Lizard, but for 2025 we will be aiming for volunteers to complete a full set of surveys over the year, to see whether Grass Snake, Slow Worm or perhaps even Adder can be found.
We rounded off 2024 with some Christmas wreath-making, using only materials gathered sustainably from our reserves, accompanied by mince pies and some chat about evergreen tree and shrub identification.
In 2025 we look forward to delivering the remaining five months of the Wildlife Recording Project and reaching more people in the local Charnwood Forest community. Saturday field meetings will be starting up in addition to our weekday sessions, plus more frequent opportunities to get out with us once the warmer months come back around: reptile surveys will begin again in March or April and the butterfly survey season for our long-standing transects will recommence at the beginning of April. As ever, we will be striving to get as close as possible to our goal of 10,000 new wildlife records made for the Geopark over the duration of the project, but most of all we will be enjoying getting back outside to visit all that Charnwood Forest has to offer.
You can find more information about how Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust are supporting Charnwood Forest on their website.