Author: Hazel Draper

Shakespeare and the Ghost Woods

14 October 2025

Finding Shakespeare’s Ghost Woods Whether it be Hamlet’s father, Richard III’s victims, or Banquo and his gory locks, everyone knows Shakespeare’s connection with ghosts. Far far fewer are aware of the connection between Shakespeare and the Ghost Woods. Yet, as our team began to research the sites of ancient woodland smothered beneath conifer plantations, we…
Rewilding Species of the Month: Bats

1 October 2025

October seems the ideal time to celebrate bats as our rewilding species of the month. They will soon be emerging in window displays of Halloween bat bunting and, if you’re lucky, your local bakers may even be serving gingerbread bats. Extended nights can also mean you’re more likely to spot a bat in the wild…
Rewilding Species of the Month: The Eurasian Lynx

1 September 2025

As part of the UK’s ecological heritage, the Eurasian lynx has earned its place as our rewilding species of the month. Although lost to us around 1,300 years ago, through habitat destruction and hunting, these tufty eared beauties managed to cling on elsewhere in Europe. Is it time we brought them back here as well?
Rewilding Species of the Month: Seagulls

2 August 2025

This title will annoy some readers since, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a seagull – there are herring gulls and black-headed gulls and common gulls and a whole host of other species of gull but no such thing as a seagull (what would Jonathan Livingston say?) but the different varieties of gull are all…
Ghost Woods Local Actions

18 July 2025

July 6th-13th was an exciting time in the Wild Card calendar as we stepped up our Ghost Woods campaign with a whole week of local actions. Working with local groups across England, from the undulating landscapes of Oxfordshire to the Pennine hills of West Yorkshire, these events were billed as a week of citizen science, art and protest…
Rewilding Species of the Month: Dragonflies

1 July 2025

One of the highlights of our visit to the Moor Barton rewilding project was when we entered a newly created wetland area and were met with a flurry of odonata activity (dragonflies and damselflies). It was a sign that this is truly a landscape that is working for nature.
The Wild Cardigan Moor Barton Meet Up

13 June 2025

A couple of times a year, to ensure that we are more to one another than disembodied heads behind a zoom screen, the Wild Cardigans physically zoom in from across the UK for a real life meet up. Whilst this provides opportunity for us to get into substantial discussions and to plan ahead for the…
Rewilding Species of the Month: The Otter

2 June 2025

The otter has quite rightly earned its place in the rewilding species of the month spotlight. In both literature and folklore, otters are often presented as helpful souls: coming to the rescue and giving support in a character’s hour of need. Now, as the planet warms, we are finding that they are living up to…
Ancient Woodland Restoration Film

28 May 2025

Last week saw the premier of a new film (embedded above) from our friends at Woods for the Trees. The film, entitled ‘Ancient Woodland Restoration: The Story of Light and Life’, is incredibly relevant to our latest campaign to restore the Ghost Woods – ancient woodland which haunts Forestry England’s plantation forests. The film premiered…
Rewilding Species of the Month: Bluebells

2 May 2025

One of the best things to do at this time of year is to head down paths that run alongside fields of bluebells and take in their beautiful scent. For those of us lucky enough to be on the nicer side of social media, springtime just wouldn’t be the same without images of violet-blue carpeted…