The British Wildlife Centre in Surrey is celebrating a quarter of a century of being open to the public, at the forefront of conservation.<\/p>\n
The centre, in Lingfield, was founded by former dairy farmer David Mills, who was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2016.<\/p>\n
At 82, Mr Mills, who is Dame Judi Dench’s partner, continues to lead the campaign to get everyone, especially children, to appreciate, respect and protect Britain’s native wild species.<\/p>\n
He said England had the “most depleted” wildlife in Europe and the centre wanted to show people the “wonderful wildlife we have in this country”.<\/p>\n
“If they at least get interested in it, they might say ‘well that’s worth preserving’,” he said.<\/p>\n
The centre is home to a number of native species, including polecats, mink, stoats, weasels, red squirrels, owls, badgers, otters, foxes, harvest mice, deer and Scottish wildcats.<\/p>\n
Mr Mills said the “devastating decline” of Britain’s wildlife was partly caused by a lack of spaces for animals to live where they were not in conflict with humans.<\/p>\n
He said: “It’s so sad, we need to make space for wildlife. Your garden is very important for wildlife and here at the centre we show you what you can do to encourage it.”<\/p>\n
The centre said one in six species was at risk of extinction due to factors such as habitat loss, climate change and pollution.<\/p>\n
It opens on weekdays in term times to facilitate school visits “so [the children] develop a life-long interest in protection and survival”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British Wildlife Centre in Surrey is celebrating a quarter of a century of being open to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-333360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}