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Core- LettsSafari: Mamhead
Image credit: LettsSafari
LettsSafari Parks at Mamhead consist of Dawlish Park, Devon Sculpture Park and Sunrise Park.
The original LettsSafari park at Mamhead Park South is the 75 acre Dawlish Park; it has abundant wild grassland, a mature, ancient forest and newly planted woodland areas with around 5,000 trees. In between the young trees is a mix of scrub and wild grassland. The macro habitats common to rewilding ecosystem design are at Dawlish Park, supported by hundreds of place specific mini-habitats that in turn nurture a wide variety of animal, plant life and fungi that drive biodiversity gains and carbon removal.
Dawlish Park, and the wider Mamhead Park that it sits
within, has a long history going back to the Domesday Book.
It was anhistoric deer park with ancient trees and wild
grasslands that roll down to the sea.
The Capability Brown gardens at Devon Sculpture Park have
gone through a multi-year restoration programme. Since the
Letts family bought this old Mamhead estate, the centuries
old cascade gardens have been transformed from a tired,
overgrown traditional English garden to a model for wildlife
gardening and biodiversity.
The ancient streams off Haldon Hill, on the outskirts of Exeter, have been restored so they can flow across the gardens, feed its lakes and ponds, and descend over the bog gardens and wetland areas. These aquatic meanderings support water plants, invertebrate and an abundance of bird life.
The sweeping lawns have become large areas of wild grasses and wildflower. Paths are carefully cut through them. This wild, ungrazed, open grassland provides abundant insects for the extraordinary collection of bats that roam the place. Twelve of the seventeen species of bats in the UK have been monitored at Devon Sculpture Park – including some of the rarest.
The 20 acre Sunrise Park has recently been created following a 4 year rewilding programme. Slithers of scrubland have been developed and fields are establishing as wild grassland.The park features Letts Wildlife Biodomes™ to accelerate soil improvement, while providing self-sustaining natural homes for insects, bugs, birds and small mammals. Previously bereft of biodiversity, the young park
is now attracting a wide range of insects and wild bees. Sunrise Park adjoins
commercial Forestry plantations as such natural regeneration is carefully
monitored to allow young deciduous trees to grow through.
The interlocking habitats at LettsSafari at Mamhead Park make it an
important core site for Devon Wildland and fences are being strategically
lowered to allow it to connect to the wider forest at Mamhead, linking then
further across the Haldon ridge.
Further afield LettsSafari is spreading the message about rewilding and how individuals can be empowered to make a change. You can subscribe to LettsSafari and take part in this innovative community and find out how LettsSafari is working further-a-field here at: www.lettssafari.com
Image credit: LettsSafari
Image credit: LettsSafari
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