Moth Night at Yarner Wood

Devon Moth Group help celebrate Yarner Wood’s species richness on 20th May 2022 Nineteen people gathered for the first Devon Moth Group field meeting of the year and to celebrate national Moth Night. The theme of this year’s Moth Night was woodland, so Yarner Wood, part of the East Dartmoor National Nature Reserve, was a fitting location and we’re grateful to the warden Albert Knott for facilitating the event. Thirteen traps of various designs were deployed along rides radiating fromRead more

Beautiful Butterfly

Yarner Wood, Bovey Valley and Trendlebere Down, located within the East Dartmoor Woods and Heaths National Nature Reserve, are fabulous hotspots for butterflies! Yarner Wood was one of the first sites to take on the annual recording of butterflies back in 1976, when the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme began. https://ukbms.org/methods Volunteer butterfly surveyors walking the Yarner Wood transect The ‘transect walk’ is quite an undertaking, requiring surveyors to walk a fixed route, in good weather, on a weekly basis betweenRead more

Yarner Wood: Open Air Laboratory and Conservation Gem

Natural England are linking up with external contributors in our blogs to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the declaration of Yarner Wood as a National Nature Reserve (NNR). Yarner Wood, made ancient by the crucial relationship between trees and fungi, has seen many shifting attitudes towards it across it’s long past. In recent centuries, up to 1952, these beautiful woodlands were owned as part of the Yarner Estate. During this time, Yarner Wood was not a place of particular conservationRead more

Canopy science

When was the last time you climbed a tree?  I expect the last time for most of us was as children – climbing the biggest tree in our garden or in the local park.  So when I heard that some students from Plymouth University would be climbing up into the oak canopy at Yarner Wood to study the diversity of life there, I had to find out more. When I spoke with the tutors from Plymouth University I learnt that they were no strangersRead more

The Templer Tramway Spring Clean-up

    There are many aspects to Yarner Wood, be that the wildlife, the landscape, the people who run and visit it or the rich heritage, each one adds to the special feeling you get when you stop by. Tucked away at the top of the reserve is a piece of history, a granite tramway called ‘The Templer Way’. This was used to transport granite mined from the Haytor quarries down to the Teign Estuary between the 1820’s and 1850’s,Read more