Second year of Lottery funded Leek Youth Rangers gets underway

Second year of Lottery funded Leek Youth Rangers gets underway

The second year of a Staffordshire Wildlife Trust project to get youngsters closers to nature got underway in October.

Following a successful first year, the Youth Rangers project, funded by the Heritage Lottery, is now back up and running.

A new group of students from Buxton and Leek College’s Foundation course started their ‘wildlife’ journey at Ladderidge Country Park with Staffordshire Wildlife Trust’s Youth Ranger project.

The group and support staff explored this diverse country park with a guided walk with the Trust’s project lead Shaun Rimmer, during the walk to the group were shown the different habitats present on the site include areas of woodland and parkland.

The focus for the group’s time with the project will involve learning the traditional rural craft of coppicing to enhance the site’s woodland and the replacing some worn wooden steps to improve access to the site.

The group will also be helping to increase the new of orchids present at Staffordshire Wildlife Trust’s Brown End Quarry nature reserve by spreading orchid collected by the project’s summer ranger’s team.

Shaun Rimmer, Project Lead, said: “We were very pleased with how the first year of the project went and it was extremely rewarding seeing the children’s confidence and skill set increase.

“They really got involved with every task they faced and we’re sure the same will happen again this year.”