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In the heart of Jersey’s natural landscape, countryside rangers Keiran Luce and Mignonne Bodenstein are key to keeping our woodland walks, cliff path infrastructure, and biodiversity running.
Their workdays are as varied as the habitats they look after, managing a balance of scheduled maintenance and seasonal works, with unforeseen jobs and incidents that they’re called out to.
One of many sites under Keiran and Mignonne’s care is St Catherine’s Woods, where they preserve the delicate balance of flora while also creating vital space for tree maintenance.
“With the support of the Back to Work programme, we’re currently doing a Hemlock cut and early meadow cut, otherwise Hemlock ends up dominating the meadow and will crowd out the other small flowers. We also need to clear the way to provide access for tree work to be completed as we’ve been dealing with hundreds and hundreds of fallen trees.”
Looking after nearly 50 sites across the Island, the team maintain around 550 hectares equating to 5% of Jersey’s land.
“A lot of the sites that people in the Island love, look that way because of our work. Sites like Portelet, Noirmont and Ouaisne look that way because we do scheduled work there throughout the seasons. We also maintain the main infrastructure on cliff paths, like railings and steps – we initially put them in, and we’ll continue to go back and fix them when needed.
“This job means we get to see parts of nature that you wouldn’t necessarily normally see. We see lots of interactions between birds and natural wildlife, including birds of prey taking down pigeons, you also find rare plants, or you may spot reptiles and vertebrate.”
While wind, rain, and cold weather may be an obvious challenge for the rangers, their biggest challenge is resource and competing with mother nature’s rapid plant growth.
“Of course, nature keeps going regardless of whether we’ve got an illness or a team member off. Nature doesn’t wait for them to feel better; plants keep growing and work still needs to be done. It’s a constant time management balancing act.”
Maintaining public outdoor spaces for Islanders to enjoy is a key element of their work, but ensuring biodiversity in Jersey’s countryside is a huge factor.
“Here in St Catherine’s Woods, the predominant seedling is Sycamore and if we just left those seedlings, they would outcompete the other types of trees here, so we’d end up losing all the Oaks and Beeches. So, we need to take out hundreds or thousands of seedlings every year.
“It’s the same with the sand dunes, we take about 2,000 seedlings off it each year otherwise it would become a forest with Oak trees all over the dunes. I don’t think many people realise that. We do lots of work that goes unnoticed, unless we’ve got a chainsaw going; it’s good though, if our work goes unnoticed and people think the wild spaces are looking after themselves, then we know we’re doing a good job.”
Beyond work, their love for nature continues, with Keiran and Mignonne both enjoying spending time outdoors, either looking after horses, rock climbing, or simply spending time with family taking in the landscapes that their work has helped to create. Infrastructure and Environment’s countryside rangers, and those supporting the team, are key to keeping the Island running so that Islanders, tourists, and wildlife, can all enjoy the natural countryside spaces.