Brooding Brontë moors are site of new coronation nature reserve
The King is to support the creation of a nature reserve on the moorland that was the setting for the Brontë sisters' tales of tempestuous romance.
The Bradford Pennine Gateway National Nature Reserve will encompass 1,272 hectares of heathland and bog around the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire.
It is to be the seventh in a series of nature reserves created to celebrate Charles's coronation in 2023.
The reserve will protect the habitats of short-eared owls, adders and curlews by connecting eight areas rich in biodiversity, including Ilkley Moor, Harden Moor and Penistone Hill Country Park.
The creation of the reserve will mean that these eight areas will now be subject to one nature restoration plan, with peat bogs restored to deal with flooding
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Country diary: This hardy survivor is brightening up the moors
From high on the Allendale moors, I can see right to the Scottish border and the soft blue outline of the Cheviot Hills. Below me, the West Allen Valley holds deeper colours, the land green and bounded with stone walls or dotted with small woods. Shadows thrown by the early evening light pick out every feature: streams, cleughs, barns and farms, mining spoil and ruins – a record of the land. The wind is warm, buffeting the cottongrass that stretches across the boggy ground and along the roadside ditch. It's a boom year for this beautiful plant, perhaps due to the dry spring putting the plants under stress. A sedge rather than a grass, Eriophorum angustifolium flourishes in its harsh moorland environment, sending out underground rhizomes where few other plants will grow; a line of snow poles shows what the winters are like. The plant's ability to survive here gives it the alternative name of bog cotton. Today, the wind sets every fluffy seedhead in bobbing motion, dancing with light like the choppy scintillations of waves. The discreet greenish flowers could be easily missed. It's those downy cottonwool plumes that enable wind dispersal that have been used to stuff pillows and make candle wicks, and dress wounds during the first world war. Plug plants of cottongrass are being planted by the North Pennines National Landscape to restore degraded blanket bog. Binding the surface of the peat together with their wandering roots, they prevent further erosion. In other benefits, the female black grouse that I occasionally see up here feed on the flower heads, giving them a source of protein and energy before laying eggs in spring. The larvae of large heath butterflies feed on a similar species, the hare's tail cottongrass Eriophorum vaginatum. For a brief time, the moor is transformed in white and I come up here to revel in the spectacle and feel the peace. Swallows swoop to pick up insects off the road. A hare lopes through the tussocks as a lark delivers a stream of notes above. Then a curlew lifts off, beats its wings before gliding, its ecstatic bubbling song ending in a drawn-out plaintive note. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
BBC News
20 hours ago
- BBC News
Solway coastline secures major restoration boost
The Solway coastline in south west Scotland has secured a major funding boost to help with its conservation, restoration and is the first project to secure support through the National Lottery Heritage Fund's (NLHF) £150m Landscape Connections Solway Coast and Marine Landscape Connections Project - Scamp for short - will receive £1.4m to shape plans which will help unlock a further £ will work with the local community to deliver an extensive programme of habitat restoration right along the Dumfries and Galloway coast. The project is the first of about 20 across the UK which will benefit from the funding aimed at boosting nature recovery, helping rural economies and attracting more chief executive Eilish McGuinness said it was the "perfect project" to get things started."The Solway Firth's rich natural heritage has supported communities along its length since the earliest settlement," she said."The heritage of millennia of human habitation are reflected in the landscape and history of the people, places and communities."This will be enhanced with National Lottery player support to deliver large-scale, long-term, meaningful change for the environment and its people, furthering our vision for heritage to be valued, cared for, and sustained for everyone, now and in the future." Dumfries and Galloway Council is leading the Scamp initiative alongside a long list of local Gail MacGregor said: "With a potential total investment of almost £8m from the heritage fund this commitment demonstrates the huge potential of our Solway Coast to become a leading light in coastal and marine nature restoration, playing its part in helping with the nature and climate crisis."By allowing our coastal and marine environment to thrive we will be bringing opportunities for learning, green jobs, wellbeing and nature-related economic development to our communities." Karen Morley, Scamp programme manager, said it welcomed the funding."It is rare for a nature restoration project to attract this level of investment over a prolonged period of time," she said."But it is also essential for this ambitious innovative programme of work to be delivered by ourselves and our partners and ensure we can make a real restorative impact on our Solway land and seascape." The Scamp scheme will be delivered over 10 years including a two-year development key habitats will be prioritised - seagrass meadows, native oyster reefs, saltmarsh, coastal woodland and sand dunes. It will also see 120 miles (195km) of new coastal trail created with 10 coastal "gateway" sites along the coast and trails will allow people to learn more about the Solway Firth and the surrounding area.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
I travelled every mile of the UK coastline. These were my five favourite places
It started at Cape Wrath lighthouse. I had just spent 55 days walking 1,000 miles up the spine of Britain, but was already thinking about my next adventure. The coastline was calling. After a year of preparation, I was back at the lighthouse, with a plan to travel anti-clockwise around my island home, by foot, by bus, by train and even by hitch-hiking, to understand its current challenges and opportunities, but also to reconnect with my inner islander. I walked around 2,000 miles of it, as I have found that it is only by moving at walking pace, and not driving at 20 times that rate, that I start to really notice and understand things. It is strange that we call it a coast line at all, as that confers on it a linear and permanent quality, when it's not. It runs for 11,000 tortuous miles of dynamic geological activity, where the south-eastern bit is sinking into its own clay and the north-western bit still rising, freed of the weight of the last ice age; some parts, such as Holderness in Yorkshire, are eroding at up to two metres a year, whilst others, like Hoylake Beach, are watching the sea recede beyond miles of new sand. For an island nation, we ought to cherish our coastline. Sadly, that's not always the case. Much of what is happening is beyond our control, such as sea level rise, erosion, warming waters and the twice-daily tide that wraps itself around the island and races across the mudflats. But much of what is happening is also down to us: the lifeless sea beds below salmon farms, sewage discharge, polluted rivers pouring out into the sea and the endless pearl necklace of discarded plastic – an average of 170 pieces per 100 metres of coastline – that comment sadly about the way we choose to live. Yet for all these problems, I found a determined army of scientists, activists, fieldworkers and volunteers working to remedy them; I found beach-cleaning schemes wherever I went, groups planting new sea grass and seeding native oysters and people simply determined not to accept that the decline of nature is a one-way street. Whilst I was shocked at the decline of so many of our coastal communities – a phenomenon brought about by a combination of technology, Beeching's axing of the railway branch lines and the dawning of cheap air travel – I was also struck by the opportunities that the internet, and working from home, might give to people who want to stay there and earn sufficient money. Studies show that health outcomes should be, on a-like-for-like basis, better in coastal communities than their equivalent inland, but they are not. Right now, some of the worst deprivation in Britain lies in our coastal towns, and the low pay and seasonal nature of the available jobs remains a real problem. Above all, these communities need to be far more involved in making their own decisions. A low point came in my own south-eastern corner of the country, where the beautiful Langstone Harbour just to the east of Portsmouth, where sewage releases have had devastating consequences to the wildlife. Southern Water has been fined £90 million for these 6,971 discharges, but the money won't bring back what is lost, and it will take years to reverse the damage done. It was a journey of highs and lows, of idiots and heroes, of peace and drama. By the time I had taken my boots off for the last time at Dunnet Head 18 months later, I was fully back in love with the coast again, and with my status as an islander. I was staggered by the beauty of our coast and, it has to be said, by the delight of my three constant travelling companions: the sound of the surf, the cry of the gulls and the thought of the next ice cream. The sheer variety of the UK's coastal habitat is astonishing. Circumnavigate our coast and you will encounter machair (fertile low-lying grassy plains), salt flats, estuaries, shingle and lagoons and towering, storm-battered cliffs. Places I had never been before and discovered for the first time linger in my memories. The following are five that really stand out. Knoydart, Scotland The wilderness of Knoydart on the west coast of Scotland is a community-owned coastal zone home to both an old temperate rainforest and a new band of native woodland, protected, for now, by the exclusion of deer who would otherwise stop it growing to maturity. The village of Inverie, a good 15-mile hike from the nearest road, seems to be reinventing what isolated communities might amount to these days given support and a healthy injection of youth. Cardigan Bay, Wales Here I found a coast every bit as beautiful as that of its more celebrated Cornish rival, but far less crowded, and therefore generally cheaper. Alongside the delight of the rising use of the Welsh language, I found people who instinctively understood the value and importance of nature, and who also had a strong pride in who they were and the history that had led them here. Penzance, Cornwall In Penzance, at the western tip of Cornwall, I found a town that had taken a six-year grip on the problem of plastic, and actually done something more than mere words to alleviate it. Through its Plastic Free Town initiative, which the organisers spent long months selling to schools, businesses, clubs and other stakeholders, Penzance has taken a giant stride to reduce the use and waste of plastic, and thus provide a valuable template for communities all around the country that could usefully follow their lead. North Norfolk On the North Norfolk coast, deep in the winter, I saw wildfowl flocks flying in from their sea roosts to the beet fields just inland. It was a magnificent sight. We talk a great deal about being the most nature-depleted country on earth, but we also need to celebrate what we have. To watch 70,000 pink-footed geese in flight is to understand in an instant how things once were, and how they could be again. Our most desolate islands Finally, although I didn't set out to go to the smaller offshore islands, I ended up visiting about 30 of them in all, including the three overtly religious ones of Iona, Bardsey and Lindisfarne, 'thin' places where the border between this world and another is supposed to be at its narrowest. Without being religious myself, I found these to be quietly moving places, perhaps inspired by the long line of early saints who made their subsequent forays into the mainland from these wild, desolate bases.
