Rescue donkeys grazing at a sanctuary near Bangor are providing an ideal habitat for one of Wales’s rarest mushrooms, the Crimson Waxcap.
Snowdonia Donkeys was set up in 2013 by retired teacher Ruth Stronge and her husband, Chris, and their growing herd of donkeys now roam a 13-acre Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) near the village of Tregarth.
They are getting a helping hand from Wales’s biggest self-storage company, Lock Stock, who have three sites in nearby Bangor and are donating and delivering a 40-foot storage unit to the site later this month to act as a store and shelter for the donkeys.
The couple look after 18 four-legged friends with the help of over 40 enthusiastic volunteers and with the hungry donkeys clearing the area of brambles and bushes it has become a perfect habitat for the mushrooms and for other rare flora and fauna including yellow ants whose nests stud a field that was once a rubbish tip.
Ruth said: “I’ve always loved donkeys and we started with two of our own which we used to take to events to raise money for the big donkey sanctuary down in Sidmouth in Devon.
“Then we heard that two of the beach donkeys from Llandudno were retiring to go all the way down there and we just thought that they could have stayed in North Wales. So we started the charity 12 years ago and it’s just grown.
“We were given a small grant by BBC Children In Need to work with children and young people with communication difficulties and ten years ago we rented a field here to work from as the charity expanded.”
“Because the land here was very poor and only fit for rough grazing and for use as a rubbish dump it hasn’t been ploughed for over 200 years which makes it ideal for the Waxcap mushrooms and for many other species.
“When the property here went into administration in 2019 we decided to remortgage our house and we bought this site and the charity has grown from there.”
Lock Stock were impressed by the work they do when they saw their website and Lee Hanson, their North West Wales Area Manager, visited to check out the logistics of delivering a 2,560 cubic foot storage unit with the business’s articulated lorry.
He said: “The work they are doing here is fantastic and one of the volunteers is actually my former primary school teacher from Llandudno so it was nice to see her again.
“As a business, we like to help out local charities in the areas where we work and we have a strong presence in Bangor where we have three sites and this is definitely a very deserving cause which is doing so much good work as well.”
Snowdonia Donkeys run a series of events throughout the week helped by the volunteers, ranging from mother and toddler groups, classes in donkey care, classes for people with learning difficulties and walkers who just want to enjoy the countryside.
Ruth explained: “People might be a bit afraid of being around horses but they tend not to be so afraid of donkeys which are wonderful animals in their own right and which
The land earned its SSSI status not just for its 54 species of rare mushrooms but also for three species of plant-eating flowers, a fly and a beetle found nowhere else in Wales, lizards, bats and three species of butterflies.
The SSSI citation said: “Parts of Moelyci are a living museum of what Welsh hill farms were like before the Second World War.”
