Meet the rangers

Our countryside rangers manage the country parks and countryside sites for everyone to enjoy.

The rangers perform a wide variety of management duties in the parks including helping visitors with enquiries, carrying out practical estate work, conservation work, environmental education and organising events and activities.

We aim to have a Ranger attending a country park every day during normal working hours (except Christmas Day). The rangers regularly patrol all of our country parks.  These patrols help them to monitor any maintenance problems and provide an efficient response to any issues.

The presence of rangers in their familiar and distinctive uniform can be a very reassuring sight for visitors to the countryside. We hope that knowing a ranger is about every day will encourage everyone to visit the parks with confidence.​

  • Debbie Samwell - Senior Ranger

    Debbie joined Northamptonshire’s Countryside Service team in December 2013 as Senior Ranger for Brixworth Country Park and Brampton Valley Way. Her journey to this role has followed a varied and winding path!

    She had two passions growing up, wildlife and countryside, and art; as a teen Debbie often combined the two by drawing on walks around Sywell Country Park. Her education focused on art, while the great outdoors remained a personal passion. Following the completion of her theatre degree, Debbie secured a role as a ranger in Surrey. This reawakened her first passion for parks and the countryside, and is where she realised her true vocation. Since then, Debbie has worked in a wide range of customer service, sales and hospitality roles, and as a ranger at Delapre Abbey, Northampton. She also volunteered for the Wildlife Trust BCN in Northamptonshire on their wildlife sites, learning a range of new conservation skills for her personal development.

  • Vikki Austin - Ranger

    Vikki has been a conservation volunteer for ten years. While working with the rangers and volunteer team at Stanwick Lakes she realised that it was possible to escape the office and pursue a career as a countryside ranger. This revelation came halfway through a six-year journey studying part-time with the Open University for a degree in Literature and Creative Writing! After completing her degree, Vikki ran away to New Zealand for a year, and returned with an even greater love of the great outdoors, and the determination to affect a career change.

    Volunteering led to a position as a part-time Assistant Ranger at Stanwick Lakes, and then a one-year placement with the Wildlife Trust BCN as a Voluntary Reserves Officer, learning about many of the varied habitats around Northamptonshire. From here, Vikki took on a casual post as a Ranger for First for Wellbeing Ltd, working primarily at Fermyn Woods Country Park, before finally securing her current role as a full-time ranger at Brixworth Country Park and the Brampton Valley Way.