Action for wildlife
A wealth of wildlife can be found and experienced in our parks and green spaces across Milton Keynes. The land in our care includes ancient woodlands and recent plantations; old hedgerows and ‘veteran’ trees; grazing pastures and hay meadows; areas of scrubland; ponds, lakes, rivers and streams.
More information about the wildlife that can be found in our parks is contained in a downloadable document entitled Our Commitment to Biodiversity. This also provides a statement of our Biodiversity Policy and how we make wildlife conservation a priority of our work whilst also maintaining a sensitive balance with recreational, amenity and landscape needs.
We have also produced a Biodiversity Action Plan. This sets out the actions we propose or desire to carry out to meet our commitment to biodiversity. This currently contains 10 habitat action plans and 15 species action plans which we will regularly report on and review.
Projects to conserve biodiversity
The Floodplain Forest
A section of the Ouse Valley Park at Old Wolverton is home to an innovative proposal to recreate the lost environment of 'Floodplain Forest' . Work is already underway to make the 120-acre site more ecologically valuable as well as more interesting and attractive parkland for existing and future residents of the new city.
It is the first project of its kind in the UK, where planning permission has been granted for mineral extraction specifically to create a new area of floodplain forest.
For further information visit our Floodplain Forest page or contact Phil Bowsher via email p.bowsher@theparkstrust.com
Elfield Nature Park
A hidden jewel, and one of Milton Keynes’ most interesting wildlife sites is how the Parks Trust views Elfield Park, where work is underway to create a nature park allowing visitors – especially schools – to see wildlife close up.
Close to the National Bowl, the new nature park came to the Parks Trust with an endowment of £285,000 which has been calculated as the amount needed to cover the long-term cost of maintaining this new resource for the city.
By the time landscaping, seeding and path building are complete Elfield Park will be unlike anything else we have in Milton Keynes, boasting a wonderful mix of woodland, short turf, wildflowers and flowering shrubs on warm sunny banks and sheltered slopes and hollows that will hum with butterfly and insect life, which in turn will attract bats and birds to the park.
An existing pond is being restored and two new ones created encouraging more of the amphibian life in which the site is already rich. In time it should become a haven for rare species such as the great crested newt to breed.
