Martin Noble – chief keeper of the New Forest

For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by wildlife. From a very early age I can recall turning over stones in the garden at my home in Warwickshire and marvelling at the array of creatures that lived under them.

Later, I progressed to a nearby pond where, using one of my mother's buckets, I spent long hours fishing out newts, water beetles, carp, etc. Although I did not know it at the time, the pond was very fertile and we could quite easily catch medicinal leeches and great crested newts, both rare species nowadays.

At the age of about nine, on one of our frequent visits to the New Forest, I caught a common lizard and kept it at home for several years. This started me off on a lifetime's interest in reptiles and I have kept them and studied them in captivity and in the wild ever since.

When I left school I was keen to find employment in some form of wildlife work but 40 years ago there were few such opportunities other than work as a gamekeeper, and the idea of rearing birds to then kill them did not appeal to me.

It was some years later, 1969, that I met Gerald Springthorpe, the Forestry Commission's head ranger for the Midlands area. He was a man of amazing knowledge and even more impressive practical ability and he taught me an immense amount about wildlife and its management.

So when a vacancy as a wildlife ranger came up at Cannock Chase Forest where Gerald was based, I applied for it and was offered the job. I can still recall the almost unreal feeling of actually working in the wild and it was some time before I came down to earth and realised that it was a proper job.

Subsequently, after spells of working as a forest ranger in Sherwood Forest and Mortimer Forest in Herefordshire, I arrived at the New Forest as head keeper.

I am now chief keeper for the whole of the New Forest and my work is rather more office-based than I would like, but it still allows me time to get out into the forest and watch its amazing wildlife.

I am responsible for overseeing the management of all the forest's wildlife, in particular the extensive herds of deer for which the New Forest is famous. I was also able to effect the re-introduction of the rare sand lizard to the forest from where it had become extinct some 20 years earlier.

I am due to retire this month and I consider myself most fortunate in that I have been able to spend the greater part of my working life putting my various ideas for managing wildlife into practice. This year I was awarded the Courtier Trophy for services to wildlife management by Sparsholt College and I regard this as a great honour.

Certainly, working as a wildlife ranger for the Forestry Commission has been a wonderful life and to be able to live and work in some of the most beautiful parts of England is reward enough in itself.

My wife Julia and I live in a lovely cottage in the New Forest with our free-ranging forest ponies visiting us each day and a collection of various orphaned wild creatures such as badgers, pine martens and weasels which Julia rears to adulthood and then releases. We also have breeding groups of sand lizard and dormouse, the young of which contribute to national re-introduction schemes.

I can thoroughly recommend the life for anyone who is as dedicated to wildlife as I have been. The hours are long and the pay is poor but the way of life is immensely satisfying. For anyone about to leave school and who may be interested in such a job then information is available from the Forestry Commission.

^ Top