ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP
Popular Panshanger Park hosts wildlife festival
In July 2016, Panshanger Park once again hosted the local Festival of Wildlife. The Hertfordshire and Middlesex Wildlife Trust, in partnership with The Hertfordshire Natural History Society organised the third annual event and the day proved a great event with around 2,000 people in attendance.
The festival was free of charge to visitors and offered guided walks and talks by the Wildlife Trust and Hertfordshire Natural History Society specialists, as well as a whole host of drop-in activities. Attendees could also go bird watching with Hertfordshire Bird Club and see the special wildlife around the beautiful Mimram River.
As well as hosting the event, we supported by offering visitors the rare chance to take a Lifecycle of a Quarry Tour. The tour began with a look round our active quarry site and then moved on to show the outstanding restoration of past quarry sites and the array of wildlife now thriving there. Children were delighted to find a mud kitchen, elder bread making and bug-hotels at the popular Forest School. Overall, 98 volunteers were put in by Tarmac staff at the park and further afield.
Stuart Wykes, Director of Land & Natural Resources, said: “We were delighted to be able to support the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust and The Hertfordshire Natural History Society in delivering this fantastic event. We were incredibly proud to demonstrate our carefully planned, award winning restoration to agriculture, wetland and nature conservation which is still being delivered through the final stages of gravel extraction, and hope that visitors over the weekend enjoyed the beautiful surroundings of the park and will visit again soon.”
We’ve since received positive feedback from a visitor at the event, congratulating us on a successful day: “I just wanted to say thank you – our family had a lovely time there. We thought that the way in which the quarry had been restored was fantastic.
“I often use the park for the Saturday morning Parkrun (Tarmac let us use the park for this) and it is a beautiful place to run and be.”