The 2022/23 Greensand Trust Youth Rangers Scheme has reached its successful conclusion with this year's cohort of 11 students receiving their course certificates at the weekend from one of our Trustees Simon Collier.

We’ve been running our annual Greensand Trust Youth Ranger scheme since 2012 - the 2022/23 scheme began last September at Rushmere Country Park. Over the past six months, they've undertaken a mixture of skills and team building challenges and practical conservation tasks working towards achieving The John Muir Award which encourages people of all ages to connect with, enjoy and care for wild places.

Our enthusiastic team turned up on dark, cold Thursday evenings and Sundays in all weathers throughout the autumn and winter months and together have volunteered over 350 hours with The Trust. Amongst other things, they have:

• Explored the country park and learnt how to identify trees
• Revamped a nature table for the visitor centre
• Created a display for the public in the visitor centre
• Surveyed for small mammals in the park using live mammal traps (four species recorded)
• Created a viewpoint barrier and opened up the view by tree felling with the ranger
• Restored heathland by pulling birch saplings
• Supported the Trust at events for the public
• Learnt about traditional green woodworking, made spatulas and built 6 bird boxes for the park
• Planned and delivered a guided walk for family and friends

Erika Pratt, our Education Officer who leads the scheme on behalf of the Trust said:

Huge thanks to Sage, one of this year's Youth Rangers, who created this fantastic video to showcase what our Youth Rangers have achieved - we hope that we’ve inspired them to become more involved in the Trust and the great outdoors and that some of them might even consider a career in conservation as a result!

To gain the John Muir Award our Youth Rangers need to meet the requirements of four challenges and record all their activities in a log book documenting their scheme journey throughout and complete the necessary hours to achieve the Discovery level award.