As winter blankets the landscape, the Forest of Marston Vale Ranger Team gears up for their busiest season of the year! Across our 13 sites nestled between Milton Keynes and Bedford, the rangers are hard at work, ensuring our Community Forest thrives even in the colder months. This winter, we’re inviting you to join us on our blog series, Ranger Diaries: Winter in the Forest where you can read about the incredible work our rangers do and the hidden wonders of the Forest during the colder seasons!

We start our series off strong with our Head Ranger, Anna Charles who has been with the organisation for nearly 15 years! As Head Ranger, Anna has a wide scope of interests and loves to get stuck into all areas of her job. Anna’s passion lies with creating and managing the best quality wildlife habitats, making our woodlands a beautiful mixed landscape.

Anna is always on the go, juggling an array of projects that bring their own unique challenges and opportunities. Over the years Anna has been involved in projects such as improving access to our sites and implementing a water safety project - essential given that many of our woodlands are home to rivers and lakes. She has also played a key role in managing tree felling projects, including one at The Grange in Willington where a row of poplars was posing a safety risk to visitors. But this wasn’t just about clearing trees - it also meant working around an active badger sett in the same woodland. With badgers being a protected species, Anna and her team had to carefully navigate the challenge of keeping the public safe while ensuring she followed all the necessary licensing requirements. Her work doesn't stop there; Anna has played a key role in renovating our historical pillbox at Waypost Wood, Cranfield to create a bat hibernaculum, as well as stabilising riverbanks due to erosion by waterflow and establishing new Countryside Stewardship agreements, a government agri-environment scheme which provides financial support to farmers and landowners to manage land to look after and improve the environment.

 What is Anna up to this winter?

While Anna spends much of her time in the office as she manages her team, she still finds moments to engage with the practical side of her work - particularly when it comes to scrub management.

What is scrub management and why is it so vital for our woodlands?

Most of this important work takes place in the Millennium Country Park, where valuable habitats thrive thanks to the natural process referred to as ‘succession’. The succession process allows areas to evolve from bare ground to grassland, then scrubland, and finally woodland, and provide crucial habitats for wildlife. The interaction of these stages creates a rich mosaic, enhancing biodiversity.

One area found at the Millennium Country Park, known as the Callow Mounds, spans over 35 hectares and is managed to promote these successional processes. Periodic ‘resets’ allow the landscape to develop once more, maintaining a balanced mix of bare ground, open spaces, and scrub. This dynamic environment supports a variety of species, including wildflowers, insects, reptiles, and birds. For instance, when thick hawthorn scrub becomes too dense, it is selectively thinned or cleared to create new open spaces. This involves coppicing - cutting plants back to ground level to encourage regrowth.

The benefits of this work are clear: species like the dingy skipper and grizzled skipper, a native butterfly, thrive in sparsely vegetated areas, gaining immediate advantages when scrub is cleared. This clearing also ensures plenty of light and space for essential plants that serve as caterpillar food. Additionally, common spotted orchids and pyramidal orchids flourish in the open areas managed for scrub.

Many birds also rely on the dense hawthorn for nesting, singing, and feeding on berries in autumn. Redwings and fieldfares can be spotted in flocks, foraging on hawthorn berries, while the melodious calls of willow warblers fill the air each spring - these birds have successfully bred on the Callow Mounds due to its diversity of habitat Anna and her team manages.

 

At the Forest of Marston Vale Trust, our rangers are an important part our mission, driving the management and growth of our beautiful landscape. With winter being their busiest time of year, we’re calling on passionate individuals like you to join us for our Volunteer Days! This is your chance to make a tangible difference, working alongside our dedicated team to help nurture and expand the Forest. Together, we can create thriving habitats for wildlife and a vibrant space for the community. Do you want to take part in something extraordinary? Join us and help grow the Forest!