Ecology of Abney Park
Abney Park was the first statutory Local Nature Reserve to be designated in Hackney. The site offers the visitor a wealth of ecological riches that are unusual so close to the centre of London.
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After a number of years in development and consultation, in October 2025 Hackney Council published its Woodland and Ecology Management Plan for Abney. This is a very welcome step.
We understand from the Parks Team that this plan is intended to codify the Parks Team’s current practice as at 2025, as well as identifying principles for future management. The Parks Team does not intend the document to set out any priorities for action, nor any time scales within which particular steps should be taken; nor is this document intended to provide a road map as to how the ecological health of the site could be monitored in practice.
Here at the Trust, we have always recognised that Abney is a complex site with multiple demands on it (nature reserve, cemetery, arboretum, historic landscape, place for recreation). In terms of natural history alone the complexity is significant with many hundreds of species of plants, fungi, vertebrates and invertebrates.
Managing such a site for the benefit of wildlife whilst delivering against all the other demands placed on Abney requires a very wide range of skill sets and experience and we hope that the Parks Team will value the expertise and input of the many individuals who have shown and continue to show their commitment to the ecology of the site.
The Trust looks forward to engaging with Hackney Council and other interested groups to further to understand how this plan will be operationalised and the necessary specialist skills harnessed to make meaningful change towards tackling the biodiversity challenge, as it presents itself on our doorstep, here in Abney.
Watch a talk by Russell Miller on the ecology of Abney Park Nature Reserve
Biography: Russell Miller
Russell is an arboricultural and ecological consultant. He specialises in veteran trees together with the fungi and invertebrates they support. He has written two papers for the London Naturalist about Abney, as well as Abney's veteran tree management plan. He has studied trees and wildlife at Abney for 25 years and wrote his MSc thesis on Abney's nationally important decaying wood invertebrates. He teaches about trees, ecology and connecting with nature. He also leads guided walks and is a wildlife photographer.
