Your Countryside wrapped: Hampshire Countryside Service’s highlights 2024
Join us as we take a look back at some of our favourite bits of 2024.
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Dec 20 2024

This year, we've been working hard to look after nature, so nature can look after you. Take a look back at some of our favourite bits of 2024, from roseate tern chicks at Lymington-Keyhaven Nature Reserve to our volunteers’ wonderful work.
We hope you have a fantastic festive season and a very happy New Year!

Green Flag awards for all our country parks
We're thrilled to announce that our five country parks have once again received the esteemed Green Flag award! Well done to our dedicated team and volunteers for preserving these spaces.

Thank you to our volunteers
Our 1778 volunteers carried out over 133,000 hours of work this year. They helped us with a variety of projects including:
- Spending 750 hours maintaining a boardwalk at Greywell.
- Volunteers from River Hamble Country Park and Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust helped with a woodland felling project.
- Staff and volunteers came together to clear scrub at Yateley Common.
We're excited to see what else our volunteers can accomplish in 2025!

The Great Coastal Birdwatch
Hampshire Countryside Service Joint Partnership held another successful Great Coastal Birdwatch. For the sixth year, Bird Aware Solent’s rangers asked the public to see how many birds they saw in an hour on the coast in the last two weeks of October. Rangers also organised 16 different events up and down the Solent coastline, speaking to hundreds of people about the amazing wildlife along our shores.
Watch Bird Aware Solent’s Ranger Eloise talk about the birdwatch to find out more. Learn more about the birds you’ll see along the Hampshire coastline, visit the Bird Aware website.
Nature recovery projects
In 2024, we continued to work on nature recovery projects including the Parish Pollinator Network, helleborine and juniper restoration projects, and the successful breeding of roseate terns.
Photo credit: Steve Laycock
Roseate terns hatched at Lymington-Keyhaven Nature Reserve
This summer, roseate tern chicks were successfully hatched on the Hampshire mainland for the first time. Volunteers carried out over 500 hours of wardening day and night during the incubation period to prevent theft or disruption. We’re so grateful for all of our staff and volunteers’ hard work keeping the lagoon islands in good condition for birds to breed.

Saving England’s lowland juniper
At Queen Elizabeth Country Park, we’ve worked to bring back the juniper tree, one of Britain’s three native conifer species. The tree has struggled in recent decades across the UK due to diseases and poor seed quality. Adapted to chalk downland, it supports a host of unique insects and fungi, such as the juniper carpet moth, and is an important food source for thrushes and fieldfare. The project aims to save the country park’s last two juniper trees and plant a wildlife corridor of more than 100 juniper trees.
As of 2024, there are now 60 young juniper plants growing in Queen Elizabeth Country Park.
New seeds from 25-year-old plants are also being spread across the park to re-establish this scarce tree in the South Downs National Park. This year, about 100 seedlings have been germinated and are being carefully tended.
Conserving helleborines
Our helleborine project has continued to flourish. At the Warren North, our population of long-leaved helleborine increased from 15 plants in 2022 to at least 35 in 2023. To support this continued growth, this year we constructed 1100m of deer fencing around a red helleborine site. We also carried out other conservation work with support from our volunteers to help the rare orchids grow. We’re hoping to see these plants flower in 2025 and will hand pollinate them to make sure there are as many seeds produced as possible.

Hampshire Forest Partnership’s third birthday
It’s nearly Hampshire Forest Partnership’s third birthday, and by the time this tree planting season has ended they will have, in total, planted over 121,500 trees.
In just three years, Hampshire Forest Partnership has planted:
- 12km of new hedgerows
- 4,500 disease-resistant elms
- 600 fruit and nut trees in community orchards
- 8 new Miyawaki mini forests
- Over 300 large standard trees planted in public spaces
- Over 19,000 native trees
- Over 5,300 m2 of new wildflower spaces
Learn more about their achievements and how to get involved on their website.