Windsor Forest and Great Park

• 1. Introduction

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  Windsor Forest and Great Park covers 1,778.9 hectares of Berkshire and Surrey, just south of the town of Windsor. It is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest. Among its residents is a beetle whose population here is considered internationally important. How does a stretch of woodland and parkland earn that kind of attention? And what lives among its trees that is found almost nowhere else?

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• 2. Layers of Protection

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  Several different designations overlap on this one piece of land, and each recognizes something different. The site is a Special Area of Conservation. Windsor Forest itself is a Nature Conservation Review site, ranked Grade I.

  The Grade I label appears again, this time for the landscaped woodland gardens. They are listed Grade I on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest. That register honors design and history rather than wildlife.

  A third identity belongs to Windsor Great Park. It is a Royal Park of 2020 hectares, and it includes a deer park. Yet the strongest case for protecting this land rests on the small creatures and fungi living among its old trees.

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• 3. Beetles, Flies and Fungi

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  Many ancient trees stand in the woodland here, alongside large areas of open parkland. That combination supports an unusually rich community of invertebrates. Only the New Forest ranks higher for the diversity of its invertebrate life.

  Many of the beetles and flies recorded here appear in the Red Data Book, the lists used to flag threatened species. The site is also home to a population of the violet click beetle that is internationally important.

  Fungi add a further layer. The range of fungus species is very diverse, and some of them are extremely rare. Because the violet click beetle population is rated as internationally important, its survival here matters well beyond Berkshire and Surrey.

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