Barry Jackson (“Baz”) is a teacher but his own experience of formal education is typical of many - he hated school and had no intention of doing my exams – “all I wanted was to work at a country park.”  Ironically he was introduced to the Wirral Country Park by his class teacher who would drop him off there a couple of times each week.  There he learnt a respect for, and love of,  the countryside.  “I was fired up by the managers at the country park,” says Baz,  “in the end I was actually being paid for working there while I should have been at school.”

Since then he has set up a wildlife reserve of 100 acres near Seaforth Docks which is now managed by the Lancashire Trust for Nature Conservation.  Baz won several awards for his work there and which included organising 50 Manpower Services workers and investing £100,000 of Mersey Council’s conservation budget.

Nowdays, Baz concentrates on teaching bushcraft and he’ll travel to your woodland to run a course on bushcraft, bow making, coracle making or help you to do a wildlife survey.  Surveys identify what is there and well as seeing what damage is being done.  For example Baz often identifies squirrel damage and works out ways to reduce the squirrel population.  He will see what badger activity there is, find evidence of deer, though he regrets how few deer there now are on the Wirral.  However buzzards are on the increase on the Wirrall and there are now hundreds of pairs whereas when Baz was working in the country park in the late 1960s there were hardly any.

Coracle making is one of Baz’s specialities – we asked Baz how he learnt and he says he thinks “it’s in the blood – my grandad used to build wooden frames for the buses for Warrington Corporation”.  He adds, “after 15 years of building them I went on a course at The Greenwood Centre in Ironbridge with Terry Kenny.  It turned out I was doing things right but he taught me a few new tricks”

Baz doesn’t use the internet but you can contact him by phone 0781 865 7756.