Wigmore Valley Park is an amazing area covering over 70 acres. It provides vital green space for the local residents of Wigmore and further afield, and is a designated Area of Local Landscape value.
The park, with its hundreds of trees, helps reduce local pollution by acting as a natural buffer, separating the airport from the surrounding area and helping to mitigate pollution from the airport. The park also locks in hazardous materials from the old landfill site that lies beneath.
The park has had over three decades to flourish to become what it is today: a rich wildlife haven.
Offering a variety of habitats from open grassland, brambles and shrub land through to mixed woodland, Wigmore Park is home to many diverse species of flora and fauna and is a designated County Wildlife Site due to its high wildlife value.
Wigmore Park is rich in invertebrates, especially insects with many species of beetle, bee, moths and butterfly that help pollinate local plants and provide a vital food source for the many mammals and birds also found there.
The park has its own seasonal pond, where frogs, toads and even smooth newts can be found.
The park supports a wide variety of mammals, with two species of deer, muntjac and roe. Badger, fox, stoat, weasel, shrew, rabbit, mole, mice and voles also make their home here, as well as several species of bat that visit the park.
Over eighty species of bird have been recorded at Wigmore Park, including eleven red listed species regularly occurring such as linnet, skylark and yellowhammer.
It provides a vital habitat for birds of prey, where you can often see kestrel, buzzard, red kite and hobby and the occasional barn owl hunting for voles in the early evening.
Wigmore Valley Park is Luton’s best site for wild orchids, flowering in their thousands between May and July with four species found there: the common spotted, pyramidal, bee and common twayblade and a number of hybrid specimens of common spotted, hybridised with southern marsh orchid.
Wigmore Valley Park is Luton’s best site for wild orchids, flowering in their thousands between May and July with four species found there: the common spotted, pyramidal, bee and common twayblade and a number of hybrid specimens of common spotted, hybridised with southern marsh orchid.
LLAL’s current plans for expansion would mean the destruction of the park. All the trees and wildlife would be gone forever.
Please join us in our campaign to save this wonderful place by stopping the further expansion of London Luton Airport.
