Lady's Wood by George Barker
Help restore five special bluebell woods near Huntingdon and protect their precious wildlife with a gift to this appeal
A tale of five woods…
Once upon a time there was a huge forest overlooking the Fens just to the north of Huntingdon. But over the centuries people chopped down the ancient Saxon forest until just fragments remained, including five very special bluebell woods with the charming names of Pingle, Lady’s, Gamsey, Raveley and Wistow.
Today these surviving sister woods are in the safekeeping of the local Wildlife Trust, and are havens for some of the rarest plants and animals in the UK with magical names such as adder’s tongue fern, goldilocks buttercup, enchanter’s nightshade and purple hairstreak butterfly.
But this is only the beginning of our story… now we need your help to give it a happy ending.
To safeguard the woods and their precious wildlife takes a lot of specialist work. We need to protect young trees, cut older trees to allow light to reach the woodland floor where flowers can flourish, look after boundary hedges, and mow glades to make ideal conditions for a wide variety of birds, bats, butterflies and bluebells. All this costs over £20,000 a year.
This is where we really need your help.
We still need to find £36,000 to restore and care for this family of five woods for the next two years. With your help we could even start work on re-uniting them once more – working with local people to make wildlife-friendly corridors to join them together.
Please give your gift today to safeguard the future of the very special Pingle, Lady’s, Gamsey, Raveley and Wistow Woods and their wonderful wildlife.
Thank you for your help
Matt Hamilton, Reserves Manager
Please give your gift today
You can donate via our website or if you prefer you can donate via JustGiving
Here are just some examples of what it costs to look after these woods...
... and so how your donation could help to save their precious wildlife:
£12 will buy a meadow rake for volunteers to manage the glades for wildflowers and butterflies.
£25 would contribute towards the cost of coppicing trees and shrubs.
£50 helps towards a survey of plants and animals so we can better understand how to protect them.
£200 will cover the cost of pollarding a veteran oak tree.
£300 would restore a pond where great crested newts can breed.