How to protect this crawl space entrance from rain and animals?

Looking for some kind of product or idea to help protect my crawl space entrance. When we bought the house, there was just this vertical piece of plywood there but that hasn’t been the best because sometimes animals have been able to get past. To shore it up temporarily, i threw a piece of horizontal plywood over it but obviously that doesn’t look great. Also looking to protect from rain so that the entrance area doesn’t get all muddy and rain doesn’t enter. Any ideas of something functional and good looking I could do here?