Wildwood Discovery Park
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| Date opened | 1999 |
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| Location | North-east Kent, England |
| Coordinates | 51°19′52″N 1°7′9″E / 51.33111°N 1.11917°ECoordinates: 51°19′52″N 1°7′9″E / 51.33111°N 1.11917°E |
| No. of species | 50+ |
| Annual visitors | 100,000 |
| Website | www.wildwoodtrust.org |
Wildwood Discovery Park is a woodland discovery park in north-east Kent, England. It features over fifty species of native British animals such as deer, badgers, wild boar, wolves and Brown Bear. It is located on the main road A291 between Herne Bay and Canterbury.
Wildwood is a Registered Charity in England, No 1093702, whose aim is to save British Wildlife from extinction and reintroduce recently made extinct animals such as European beaver, wild boar and Modern Tarpan (Konik).
Wildwood Trust are achieving this through operating a wildlife education project that attracts over 130,000 visitors each year and educating 13,000 children on organised education trips. Wildwood Trust has an active membership of about 50,000.
Visitors to the park can see British animals species past and present, with the animals set in natural enclosures.
Wildwood's history can be traced back to the 1970s when Terry Standford, Operations Director of English Woodlands, created a woodland nature reserve which grew into a small wildlife park in a woodland setting. This evolved into a small zoo called Brambles. Following major reinvestment from Terry Standford and his business partners Peter and David Rosling ‘Wildwood Discovery Centre’ started life in 1999 as a visitor centre, with the vision to educate local people about the need to conserve native wildlife and their habitats.
After three years of Wildwood being open the owners decided its future would be best secured by it becoming a charitable trust. A Charitable Trust was formed By Kenneth West, a retired company Chairman and Peter Smith, a conservation scientist and charity management expert and they assumed running of the park in June 2002, and officially took over the park in December of that year. Since then has been known as Wildwood Trust. The Trust has grown considerably in this time and is now one of the largest charities in Kent.
A twisting trail winds through 42 acres (170,000 m2) of natural ancient woodland which is attached to the Blean, one of the largest areas of ancient woodland in southern England. The woods have been managed by humans on a coppice rotation, harvesting trees between 5–20 years, allowing the stools to regenerate. Parts of the Blean woods are a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the presence of habitats and species of national importance. Heathy areas provides an important habitat for the rare heath fritillary butterfly Melitaea athalia, a UK BAP priority species, historically linked with traditional woodland coppicing. The caterpillar’s food plant, common cow-wheat is abundant in the woodland.
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