The Wildlife Trust is excited to hear that East Keswick Village Hall’s offer for the Illingworth Field, which lies directly behind the Village Hall’s garden, has been accepted.
The Village Hall has our full support in acquiring the Illingworth Field. We believe it will contribute to protecting, improving and extending existing local multifunctional green corridors. It will enable an increase in connectivity to the existing local habitat network, including the Ellikers nature reserve to the north of Illingworth Field, and offer the potential for wider links around the parish and beyond.
East Keswick Wildlife Trust is committed to working with the Village Hall to preserve this green space and create opportunities for the local community and visitors to learn and play a central role in working with nature to address the causes and consequences of climate change.
Peter Guildford and David Wort from the Village Hall committee meet David Smith, Chairman of East Keswick Wildlife Trust, to discuss plans to improve biodiversity on the land behind the Village Hall.
We will be holding our annual family day on Sunday 9th July from 2-4pm at the charcoal burn area in Oxclose Wood.
This year we won’t have the kilns lit, but will be loading them ready to burn – something that children love being involved with. We would recommend bringing gloves to protect your hands. It is a great opportunity to learn about the charcoal burns too, but without the smoke!
The pizza oven will be fired up and we will provide the dough. If you can bring tomato sauce and toppings that would be great. We won’t be able to provide seating, so please feel free to bring rugs or chairs.
There will be lots of fun for the children including willow weaving, scavenger hunt and drawing. Our Trust moth expert will have traps to show the children the variety of moths that live in the woods. There will also be the opportunity to learn more about the Trust, with talks on charcoal burns and how the woodland is managed.
This event is free for members or a minimum donation of £5 for non members.
We need to know numbers, to enable us to plan activities and prepare the right quantity of pizza dough. If you could let us know if you are coming and how many of you there will be, by Thursday 6th July that would be helpful. We are limited to the number of pizzas we can cook in the time available, so please book early to avoid disappointment. Please reply to thomasin@ekwt.org.uk, we hope to see you there!
We are delighted to announce that the land purchase of Bardsey Fields completed on Friday 26th May. We can now start planning a consultation about how we manage the land going forward. Watch this space for further updates!
David, our Chairman, wrote to the King on behalf of the Trust to let him know about our campaign to raise funds to buy Bardsey Fields and this is the reply that we received.
Once widespread, this plant is now very rare with over 99% of its population found on just 5 sites in the United Kingdom. The plant is small and can be inconspicuous except when it flowers in Spring around Easter time, hence the name Pasque flower, Pulsatilla Vulgaris.
The Pasque flower was thought to be lost in Yorkshire, until in 1984 a single plant was discovered in a heavily grazed grassland near Leeds. English Nature took over the lease of the site and work was done to increase the population, but this was unsuccessful, and the viability of the plants seed questioned.
How East Keswick Wildlife Trust became involved
In 2016 East Keswick Wildlife Trust were contacted by a senior officer from Natural England who suggested that we take on the project to help save the plant from extinction in Yorkshire. He knew of East Keswick Wildlife Trust’s successful conservation projects and developing expertise and success in germinating uncommon native wild plant species.
The Trust initially took 2 seeds from the plant and proved their viability by propagating 2 healthy plants which were then protected and kept safe in East Keswick. In 2019, East Keswick Wildlife Trust put together a project team and applied for a 5-year license from Natural England to secure the Pasque flower’s future in Yorkshire. The license was approved, and seed collected, with some deposited at the Millenium seed bank at Kew.
Counting the Pasque flower plugs in April 2022
Inspecting the site for the re-introduction project
A resounding success
2020: East Keswick Wildlife Trust had a seed sowing germination success of 55% and a further 1,300 seeds were sown
2021: 67 plants were plug planted into the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust site at Ledsham Bank
April this year: East Keswick Wildlife Trust volunteers returned to survey the site and found that 31 plants had survived the winter with a number in flower.
We continue to nurture more seedlings with a view to plug planting them in the future and consider this project to be a resounding success.
Please follow the link below to watch a short film by the Natural History Museum about this lovely flower
On 29th and 30th October Ann Hanson and colleagues from the Yorkshire Mammal Group joined East Keswick Wildlife Trust to survey Fitts Fields for small mammals. 50 humane large Longworth traps were set on the Saturday evening and on Sunday morning we met to open the traps.
The children who had helped to set the traps were very excited to see what we would find.
32 of the 50 traps had small mammals in them, all looked healthy and were a good weight.
We recorded: 14 bank voles, 3 field voles, 14 wood mice and 1 common shrew.
This shows that there is a very good population of small mammals in these fields and although we did not find a harvest mouse this time, we do know that they are living here.
