newsBritain is sleepwalking towards disaster and a timely report from Yorkshire Wildlife Trust tells us why
Nature lovers with cameras and notebooks echo the warnings of senior environmentalists that we are losing what makes Yorkshire so special (Picture by Trevor Grundy taken from inside a hide at Blacktoft Sands in Yorkshire)
By Trevor Grundy
BLACKTOFT SANDS, East Yorkshire (June 5, 2024) – – – A warning that thousands of plants and animal species are being “pushed to the brink of collapse” in one of Britain’s most nature friendly counties is the stark warning made in a special report published by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust (YWT) today.
The 32-pages State of Yorkshire’s Nature report was compiled and analysed from a number of respected sources and environmentalist organisations and this is the first time YWT has published its growing concerns at such length and detail.
Says Rachael Bice, YWT’s chief executive: ”It would be a true tragedy for everyone who calls Yorkshire home if we lost the haunting call of the curlew, the abundance of gannets and puffins on our coastal cliffs and the uplifting sight of butterflies dancing across our wildlife meadows.”
She added: ”We are losing what makes Yorkshire so special and sleepwalking towards homogenised landscapes where only the most common and adaptable species can survive alongside the demands of human life.”
Rachael Bice of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust( YWT)
The YWT provides important evidence for Yorkshire as a stronghold for some of the UK’s rarest and most threatened creatures and plants including –
- Birds – 35 percent of British breeding tree sparrows are found in Yorkshire and 21 percent of the breeding population of the UK’s most threatened resident bird species – willow tits. Two-thirds of regularly breeding and wintering birds in Britain can be found in Yorkshire.
- Moths – Yorkshire is the only English county which is home to dark bordered beauty moths. The county also supports over two-thirds of all British butterfly and moth species.
- Yorkshire is the only place in the country where Yorkshire sandwort, thistle broomrape and lady’s sipper orchids are found.
- Nearly 1,000 species of native flowering plant and fern species are currently known in Yorkshire.
The report underlines that Yorkshire is the home to nationally important populations of endangered species, including willow tits.
The CEO of the YWT said that the report should act as “a rallying cry” to the people of Britain.
She added: “It is vital that we recognise what makes Yorkshire’s wildlife distinctive, nationally important and demand the action which will ensure our natural systems and species can flourish alongside us into the future.”
With only a few weeks to go before the next general election, the YWT hopes their new and detailed report hits home and wakes people up – especially would-be MPs posing as guardians of the nation’s future.
The frontpage of I newspaper on June 6, 2024 the day after the publication of the important YWT report-
“I” reports today (June 6, 2024: “Rangers on the Farne Islands, off Northumberland, are gearing up for their first full puffin count in five years, amid hopes that the key breeding site is free of bird flu. The National trust said this is a critical year for the census of the puffin colony after monitoring was curtailed due to the Covid epidemic.
First full puffin count since the Covid disaster
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epidemic
Trevor Grundy is an English journalist who lived and worked as a reporter in Central, Eastern and Southern Africa from 1966-1996. He is a life member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA). He and his wife are members of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). They live in Beverley, Yorkshire.