Junior Wildlife Wardens

In May 2025, Mid Devon Wildlife agreed to host this exciting scheme. It had previously been part of the Mid Devon Wildlife Wardens schemme, hosted by new Prosperity Devon and when that was disbanded, they need a new host. 

The Junior Wildlife Wardens project began as a pilot with children aged 5-11 in the Bampton area who attended out of school events and worked independently through wildlife related tasks. From this it was clear the scheme would work more effectively with regular interaction and guidance in the school environment. 

The project for the last 9 months has been working with Silverton and Brampford Speke schools. Students have opted into the project and is working with 65 students aged 6-11. The junior wardens receive a booklet of seasonal project ideas and tasks to help them to learn about and protect the local environment and inspire others to do the same. They are awarded points and eventually a sticker and badge for their progress across the year. Schools are visited each season to check the students’ progress and to work on some of their tasks with them. 

In schools so far they have made plastic free bird feeders, constructed and found ways to protect various habitats in their school grounds, looked for waxcaps, made spore prints, collected and catalogued leaves, had a fungi foray, planted tree seeds, analysed lichens, identified bird calls, used a footprint tunnel, drawn and labelled plants of interest, made posters to share information about an aspect of wildlife they want to protect and been on a Bioblitz in both schools.

The scheme is led by a member of MDW, Laura Grant. Laura works with Bethia Stevenson-Paul and they support 2 schools each term. 

The work will be overseen by an MDW  subcommittee comprising Liz Redfern, Andrew Birnie, Colin Williams, Clare Moughton and Laura Grant.  

The MDW committee saw this as an ideal opportunity to contribute to developing future wildlife enthusiasts and the work matches several of our aims. Many of us were inspired when we were younger to be curious about the natural world around us and this work certainly does that.

Each term Laura writes a Newsletter for the schools and parents and here is the report from the summer term…

Junior Wildlife Wardens Newsletter Summer Term

It’s been a brilliant summer term for our junior wardens, with new recruits, final badges earned and some brilliant wildlife discovery and learning.The new wardens, class 2 at Bickleigh and the current students from Brampford Speke have been working on summer tasks to support wildlife at home and in school. They loved building bug hotels and drawing and identifying plants and wildflowers in their schools. We had a brilliant time bio-blitzing in their churchyard and community orchard recording 80 and 96 different species in each. We also had huge success setting up footprint tunnels in which both schools recorded hedgehog footprints, which was very exciting! 

The 50 students from Brampford Speke School finished the scheme this term, earning their badges through their hard work and learning. They have made plans to continue with the project beyond this by fundraising for a wildlife trail camera for their school (to hopefully film their hedgehog), completing their remaining booklet tasks and setting up their own wildlife wardens club independently. We had some lovely feedback from them about the project, and we wish them ever success in their continued learning!

We look forward to returning to Bickleigh in the autumn term to review their summer progress and work on autumn wildlife tasks. Over the summer we will be applying for further funding to work in more local school and support more wildlife and the environment through the students learning. 

Thank you, Mid Devon Wildlife, for your support!