Size Isn’t Everything
Friday. Sunny and clear again, and a lovely, peaceful morning, first thing. Dash had stayed overnight at a party in Canterbury, so he needed a lift around 9 a.m. We picked up a Maccie D’s breakfast on the way home — an emerging post-party tradition that I’m happy to get behind. Later, Gubs and Kadience went out for a day trip to Wildwood; Vanessa and Dash (after a sleep) tagged along as well. In the evening we had a barbecue, and made s’mores on the patio firepit before settling down to watch a movie.
A short note about Wildwood
A little beyond Sturry, on the A291 between Canterbury and Herne Bay, Wildwood occupies forty acres of ancient woodland at Herne Common. Its origins go back to the 1970s, when forester Terry Standford established a small woodland nature reserve containing wild boar and red squirrels. This gradually became a modest animal park called Brambles, before reopening as the Wildwood Discovery Centre in 1999. Three years later, Kenneth West helped turn it into the charitable Wildwood Trust, devoted to the conservation and restoration of British wildlife.
The park now keeps more than 200 animals along a winding woodland trail, including brown bears, European bison, wild boar, beavers, otters, wildcats and Eurasian lynx. Some remain familiar inhabitants of the British countryside; others disappeared centuries ago, making the place as much a walk through Britain’s lost natural history as a conventional wildlife park. The enclosures sit among mature trees and undergrowth, while a rope bridge passes above the bear enclosure, an arrangement which presumably gives the bears something to look at as well.
Wildwood’s work extends well beyond the park fence. In partnership with Kent Wildlife Trust, it introduced European bison into West Blean and Thornden Woods in 2022, where their grazing, bark stripping and habit of opening paths through dense vegetation are being used to restore the woodland naturally. The project produced the first bison conceived and born on the site in 2023. Wildwood has also helped return red-billed choughs to the cliffs around Dover after an absence from Kent of more than two centuries.
More recently, Flossie and Torridon, Wildwood’s two Eurasian lynx, moved into a much larger woodland enclosure with trees, long grass, platforms and separate spaces suited to these distinctly solitary cats. By June 2026 their keepers were reporting a marked improvement in their behaviour and welfare, while the enclosure may eventually support breeding for a future British reintroduction programme. The year also brought a much sadder change: the park’s five European wolves were put to sleep on 25 March after the pack’s social structure collapsed, causing serious injuries which could no longer be treated safely or humanely. Nuna, Odin and their three sons had been one of Wildwood’s best-known families; woodland history, like the woodland itself, does not always move in tidy or comfortable directions.
