Wildlife News for March

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RachelMC
Posts: 460
Joined: Mon May 17, 2010 1:04 pm
Location: Chester

Wildlife News for March

Post by RachelMC »

Work starts to restore wetlands to Delamere Forest:

A quarter of a million pound project to restore a series of internationally-important hidden wetland habitats in Delamere Forest has got off to a successful start.

Cheshire Wildlife Trust has kick-started the £250,000 scheme with local volunteers by removing trees and scrubland as part of a project to restore rare mosslands in the popular forest.

The trust is reassuring the public that any trees being removed would not naturally form a part of the much more open mossland landscape it is reinstating.

These wetland areas would have been the original landscape features of the area a century ago, before the largely man-made coniferous forest was introduced.

A result of the last Ice Age, shallow pools or ‘meres’ were left behind as the ice shifted and retreated, and these pools were then occupied by specialist plants and wildlife including white-faced darter dragonflies, carnivorous round-leaved sundews and mossland ‘super-plant’ sphagnum moss.

Sphagnum moss can store up to 20 times its dry weight in water and the restoration of healthy upland sphagnum bogs could prove a natural method of storing some of the rainfall that has contributed to flooding in many parts of the UK.

The trust has also entered the second year of a scheme to reintroduce the White-faced Darter dragonfly (Leucorrhinia dubia) back into Delamere Forest after it became extinct in Cheshire more than a decade ago.

Katie Piercy, who is leading the Lost Mosslands project, said: “We know how precious trees are to people and wildlife, especially here in Cheshire where we are the least wooded county in England.

“However, we have a special case with these rare mosslands – more than nine out of 10 of which have already been lost in Britain – and an opportunity to help revive the fortunes of the very special wildlife that makes a home there.

“Although we’re removing a small number of very common trees like Birch, in turn we’re allowing habitats to regenerate that on a wider scale can assist with retaining rainwater and store carbon, which has a crucial role to play in our wider battle with climate change.”

The Delamere’s Lost Mosslands project is being supported by WREN, Natural England, the Forestry Commission and Chester West and Chester Council.

Article re-posted from the Northwich Guardian

RachelMC
Posts: 460
Joined: Mon May 17, 2010 1:04 pm
Location: Chester

Underground Coal Gasification in the Dee Estuary

Post by RachelMC »

Underground Coal Gasification in the Dee Estuary:

By Dr Hilary Ash - posted on the Wirral Wildlife Blog

You may have heard of the possibility of coal gasification of the beds under the Dee Estuary, which has the potential to be very damaging to the wildlife of the Dee. We will obviously oppose any planning application, on grounds of damage to wildlife, and on the general grounds that, to avoid climate change catastrophic to people and wildlife, we need to leave a substantial proportion of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, and risky ones like this should be the first to be left alone.

Wirral Wildlife belong to The Dee Estuary Conservation Group, which is an umbrella body for a number of environmental organisation concerned with the Dee Estuary. The DECG is investigating this as a group and will undoubtedly oppose any planning application that is made. Richard Smith runs the Dee Estuary Birding website http://www.deeestuary.co.uk and is just about to retire as long-standing secretary of DECG. He has written a short article about coal gasification in the March newsletter on the Dee Estuary website. It explains the national and (vitally) international protection that is now enjoyed by the Dee Estuary, which means that proposals for gasification would have to go through many hoops, including European and international (Ramsar) bodies.

So it could not happen easily or quickly, or without a lot of publicity. Should it get to a planning application, we would of course we looking for as many people as possible to object.

Meanwhile, please do your bit to counter the perceived "need" for this by the things we all need to do: reducing our own energy consumption, insulating houses, upgrading heating systems, moving energy supplier to one which supplies as much renewable energy as possible, and lobbying our politicians to make them realise that climate change is happening, is in large part due to human activity, and that we all need to tackle it. That must include renewable electricity generation as well as energy conservation - but we do examine all planning applications for harm to existing wildlife. Do contact your MP about this.

For more information on climate change, see: http://www.ipcc.ch (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

How we in Britain can change the way we get and use energy: http://www.zerocarbonbritain.com

Dr Hilary J Ash
Hon Conservation Officer
Wirral Wildlife

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