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Dawlish Park - Letts Safari's First Safari Park
www.plus.lettssafari.com

Dawlish Park - Letts Safari's First Safari Park

This extraordinary eco safari park is inspiring a movement toward smaller-scale rewilding

LettsGroup
Dec 3, 2021
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Dawlish Park - Letts Safari's First Safari Park
www.plus.lettssafari.com

Dawlish Park is Letts Safari’s first safari park, which was announced when we launched LettsSafari.com in June 2021. It is a 75 acre park at Letts Safari’s centre for rewilding in Mamhead Park, on the outskirts of Exeter. This special place is a model for rewilding safari parks and has achieved a number of firsts. The eco park removes around 75 tonnes of carbon a year.


It is one of the first successful smaller-scale rewilding safari parks - designed specifically to remove carbon and reverse the biodiversity crisis by restoring endangered wildlife and the natural habitats required to support them.

As a safari park should be - wild, free and serene

The place proves that smaller-scale safari parks can make as much of an ecological impact as larger parks by adopting an intensive ecosystem approach to wild spaces.

Ancient trees are truly the lungs of our planet, drawing in carbon

Dawlish park has also been a proving ground for specialist herbivores that were chosen for their ability to live wild and free in smaller-scale safari parks. They are not as big as the ones that exist in larger scale safaris and rewilding projects, such as red deer, elk, bison and wild cattle, but they make as significant an impact - enhancing and regenerating smaller landscapes.

We may not have buffalo at Dawlish Park…

Herbivores featuring in Dawlish Park include fallow deer, wild alpaca and badger faces.

But we have a range of equally impressive smaller herbivores

The ecosystem design, habitat setup and the initial herbivores have created the right conditions for endangered wildlife to migrate to this eco haven. A sizeable variety of small, medium and large birds now flock to the park, alongside a wide range of bats, insects, invertebrates and wild mammals including foxes, badgers and dormice.

“Chilling… or at least I am if you’re a small rodent!”

The original Letts Safari park has abundant wild grassland, a mature, ancient forest and newly planted woodland areas with around 5,000 trees. In between the young trees is a mix of scrub and wild grassland. The park is packed with fungi - sometimes referred to as the “circulatory system of the planet”.

Fungi sandwich!

The macro habitats common to rewilding ecosystem design are, at Dawlish Park, supported by hundreds of place specific mini-habitats that in turn nurture a wide variety of animal, plant life and fungi that drive biodiversity gains and carbon removal.

Technology will increasingly enable us to monitor progress and performance and bring the park into your home with Letts Safari +.

People, technology and rewilding safari parks - liberating!

Dawlish park, and the wider Mamhead Park that it sits within, has a long history going back to the Domesday Book. It was an historic deer park with ancient trees and wild grasslands that roll down to the sea. It still has smugglers tunnels that run through it surrounded by a number of ancient follies.

“Tough day”

The park, from early on, inspired a number of rewilding projects in the region - now more widely. Letts Safari was initially developed to enable people to visit and learn from Dawlish Park online - so that its approach could be implemented more widely. In just a few months since we launched the Letts Safari Network, we have seen the number of rewilding parks in our network going from one to four, with more in the pipeline.

Letts Safari +
Hill Crest Rewilding Park Joins Letts Safari
Hill Crest is the latest rewilding park to join the Letts Safari Network of parks. Kate Morley’s family farm, on the edge of Dartmoor, has turned to smaller-scale rewilding to restore its natural biodiversity and remove carbon. She has joined Letts Safari to further develop this exciting project…
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6 months ago · 2 likes · Letts Group

We are even beginning to explore the development of Letts Safari parks in urban centres. We believe that urban rewilding represents a significant opportunity waiting to happen.

Letts Safari will always be indebted to Dawlish Park and all that it has given us. One day we hope to look back at this place as the springboard for a movement that spread rewilding safari parks and gardens far and wide - genuinely doing something about climate change.

We hope you can join us.

Letts Safari is doing something about climate change. To join our community and support our work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.


Get more Letts Safari updates and wildlife photos at our twitter. And see all the latest posts at Letts Safari +.

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Dawlish Park - Letts Safari's First Safari Park
www.plus.lettssafari.com
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