​16 Nov 2020: Judy was included in the  BBC Woman's Hour 2020 Power List: Our Planet  ​For details click here
  1 Jan 2021: she has also been included in the New Year's Honours List - click here
Picture


Dr Judy Webb, founder member of the original New Marston Wildlife Group, (seen here in the Lye Valley) is the Coordinator of the volunteers group of Friends of Milham Ford Nature Park.   

​She has her ​​own website.
​
​​
​We are always delighted to welcome new volunteers to help maintain the park. There is no requirement to pay a subscription to join the group and you don't have to commit to helping regularly. You can come along to events for an hour or so, when convenient for you, choosing tasks that suit you best, from litter-picking to more strenuous ones, such as digging-out unwanted vegetation.

If you'd like to join us or get further information about what we do, we'd be pleased to meet you at one of our Future Events or you can contact Judy at the address below.

​The importance of dead wood
Article by Curt Lamberth, former Chairman of New Marston Wildlife Group (now Friends of Milham Ford Nature Park)
This article is now on Google Drive as six separate pdfs.  Open first one, then use arrows on left and right of window to move through them.
See short BBC video made in partnership with the Royal Society to mark  World Soil Day, 5 December 2020
  • 1g of soil can contain as many as 50,000 species of microscopic organisms.  One teaspoon of soil holds more micro-organisms than there are people on Earth.
  • Forms the basis of many antibiotics
  • Stores three times as much carbon as all the plants and trees on Earth combined
  • It takes 100 years to build up 0.5cm of soil and it's  being lost 50 to 100 times faster than it's being rebuilt.  Contributors to this loss are urbanisation,  as well as intensive farming, which releases carbon from the soil
  • In less than 30 years, from the end of the 1970s, more than 10% of the carbon stored in the soil has been released.

​Beavers build first Exmoor dam in 400 years 
BBC News  30 November 2020
​
Hedgehog road deaths three times higher than previously thought
Tony Diver, The Telegraph, 18 October 2020
​A good website for identifying trees: 
http://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/tree-identification/

Oxford University Parks Tree Identification 
The Oxford University Parks website has a page with lists of trees found along each 'walk'.  ​Each tree has a code (indicated in the lists) and bears a label showing its code. With a print-out of the list(s) and the map of the park you can identify the trees.
Ducks:
If you see any ducks while you are in the Park, please DO NOT feed them. They eat the pond life that we have been trying hard to encourage by pond management and introducing beneficial aquatic plants. They also stir up mud, which coats the plants, blocking out the sunshine they need to survive.  On feeding ducks, see also BBC Newsround article, 14 March 2016 and BBC video 14 March 2016
Dogs:
To prevent health risks and to preserve the flowers and fungi, please keep your dog on a lead so you can keep track of any 'deposits' and bag-and-bin them.  (There are red bins for dog excrement.)  Dog excrement adds nutrients to the soil making conditions more favourable for grass, which could then smother and kill off the wildflowers and the fungi.  Roundworm eggs in dogs' faeces can survive for up to 5 years in the soil.  Ingesting even just small particles of soil contaminated by dog faeces can cause toxocariasis, which can lead to  blindness,  as in the case of a toddler who fell in dog mess (click here) and  a woman who had to have an eye removed 30 years after becoming infected (click here).
Please do not bring any species to add to the park.  A well-intended 'gift' could be damaging for its ecology.
For example, see Moving frogspawn or frogs between ponds may aid the spread of ranavirus  BBC News, 28 Sept 2016
"Ranavirus is one of the most serious health threats currently facing the UK's amphibian population"
Picture

Green Health Route in Marston
The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (a charity) has produced a map of a local nature walk route, (2.5 miles approx.), which includes Miham Ford Nature Park, after liaising with schoolchildren from St Nicholas, St Michael’s and New Marston Primary Schools, as well as with residents at Marston Court, the care home near to the Park, who are encouraged to use the route, or parts of it, by walking or venturing out on their mobility scooters.  ​Copies of the leaflet  showing the route (link above) have been put on the notice boards in the Park.  For further information click here


Left: some of the residents of nearby Milham Court visiting the park
For further photos, click here
​