Author: Hazel Draper

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…
Ban Driven Grouse Shooting

By Elena Grice

3 April 2025

Our friends over at Wild Justice have a petition to ban driven grouse shooting that is currently about 16,000 signatures off the required 100,000 to be debated in public. With moorland burning leading to carbon emissions, out-of-control wildfires, damage that leads to flooding, as well as air pollution and raptor persecution, driven grouse shooting needs…
Rewilding Species of the Month: The Nightingale

31 March 2025

They might not be much to look at, in fact anyone new to birdwatching might categorise one as an LBJ (little brown job), but the nightingale has inspired poets and lovers alike to win their place as one of the UK’s best loved birds. They are also one of the most endangered. In fact, the…
Why Visiting Ancient Woods is Good for Your Child and the Planet.

By Hazel Draper

27 February 2025

People in the UK today often need to relearn how to be connected to nature – something which should come so instinctively. This is why access to nature is so important and why it needs to start at a young age. It’s not just good for nature connectedness, it’s good for your child’s health too:…
Radical rest

By Hazel Draper

9 September 2024

To be at rest and to be acting when and where needed without exhaustive demands on productivity is to thrive. We must begin to appreciate the intrinsic value in this.