Eager for Beavers? Grouse Shooting & Air Quality : Sunday 23rd July
News of grouse moors, Wyming Brook and plans for the city's air. Plus What's On Out There this week.
Morning. This week, a look at the likely return of the Eurasian Beaver to these parts soon, as reported in our Where The Wild Things Are feature earlier this year.
We also have our What’s On Out There section, our snappy outdoor news section, and a few thoughts on how oversimplified news from Uxbridge may or may not have implications here.
Thanks again to all the regular readers switching to full membership. Your support is essential for this local publication for the Outdoor City. Please do spread the word.
Beaver Believers
A year ago, I clambered around a series of damp log piles in the Burbage Valley with city council biodiversity officer Angus Hunter.
“We’ve been trying and failing to be beavers here,” he said. “So why not have real beavers instead?”
After most of the old conifer plantation in the valley was cleared, the council and land managers the Eastern Moors Partnership wanted to recreate the kind of damp moorland landscape the original Bronze Age inhabitants of Burbage would have recognised.
Which meant lugging old logs and branches round to make dams, as Eurasian Beavers would have done for free, if they hadn’t been wiped out in England 500 years ago. (They’d been hunted out of existence for their fur and a secretion from their anal glands used in perfume).
Around the Sheffield Lakeland area, humans were also carrying out the jobs of beavers over the last few years, building ‘leaky dams’ to help slow the flow of rain across the landscape.
“A tree falling into a stream eventually gathers twigs and sticks and forms a dam, so in a high flood event, water is slowed and displaced into the wider flood plain,” said project officer Nabil Abbas when I met him during a downpour near Agden reservoir.
He explained how beavers would naturally create and maintain a series of leaky dams, which would slow the water flow after heavy downpours, while also creating places where lots of other creatures could flourish.
Eurasian Beavers are known as a ‘keystone species’ which means their existence is linked to thousands of other creatures large and small, from tiny water insects to Water Voles, dragonflies and endangered birds like Willow Tits.
Angus and colleagues have been talking for some years about bringing Eurasian Beavers to the outskirts of Sheffield from successful reintroduction schemes around the UK.
And now, after a £96,725 feasibility grant from the Yorkshire Regional Flood and Coastal Committee, it looks like it’s finally going to happen, and the study will consider where our beavers might set up shop.
After memories of fish-eating cartoon beavers in my youth, Angus patiently explained to me that beavers are vegetarian so fish farms are safe, and the only issue of concern for some landowners is that beavers are not always choosy about which small trees to fell and where to build their dams.
The Lakeland area around Strines and Agden could be a possibility, and Blacka Moor, and other spots south and west of the city. Burbage might be too small an area, said Angus in reality, and the rewilding there is actually going quite well anyway.
Angus told me he’s heading down this weekend to talk to his mates at an existing beaver colony in Devon. Maybe next time he goes, he’ll bring back a beaver family to make their homes again on Sheffield’s rivers.
Brief News
Game’s Up For Game Bird Shooting? - Maybe not quite yet. Following the relinquishing of another Peak District game shooting lease earlier this year by the National Trust, there were reports this week that the United Utilities water company have now decided not to renew any of the shooting leases on their land, including areas of the Peak District.
Campaigners are waiting to see the detail, as the start of the grouse shooting season on the inglorious 12th August approaches. However, the signs are there that many in the business world believe there may be better uses for the 20% of Peak District land set aside for blasting fat game birds out of the sky. Rewilding and protecting moorland is good for local jobs and the local economy too.
Wyming Brook - Wyming Brook Drive, and the car park at the top, will now be closed until late August, so Yorkshire Water can remove larch trees felled earlier in the year in their plantation around the Rivelin reservoir.
The felling is a result of a government order following an outbreak of Phytophthora ramorum disease, a water mould which can spread easily in wind-blown rain or rivers.
Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust, who manage the nature reserve around Wyming Brook Drive, have already carried out larch felling on the site, and aim to plant native broadleaf trees to replace the larch, a non-native ornamental tree planted many years ago. I wrote last year about how SRWT are working to use the felling to return more biodiversity to the site. Updates on the work from the Trust are here.
Allez Allez Ulez - Commentators are still chewing over how much the London Ultra Low Emission Zone issue affected the recent Uxbridge byelection. The winning candidate appeared to be standing for the Anti Ulez party rather than anyone else, so it might appear to some that the Ultra Low Emission Zone idea is anathema to voters.
Local commentators are also noting the reining back of the Abbeydale and Ecclesall Road bus priority schemes, and how much income the Sheffield Clean Air Zone charges are making. This money, I understand, is ring fenced to improve local air quality, so will only be used to help fellow Sheffielders stay alive and breathe easier.
Before the CAZ arrived, public health director Greg Fell told me that air pollution affects your heart and circulation as well as your lungs, hampers brain development in babies, and contributes to lots of deaths in Sheffield - between 1 in 20 and 1 in 10 of all the people who die here every year. And the models show that the CAZ will work, he says.
“It’s a well thought-through scheme to save lives,” was his summary.
It’s far too early to tell exactly what’s happened to our air since the CAZ arrived, but government figures for Devonshire Green (within the CAZ) appear to show a 10% reduction in total Nitrogen Oxides in the month or so since the full operation of the CAZ this year, compared to the same time last year. (The main pollutant the CAZ aims to tackle.)
Politicans seem to be weighing up where their votes are, and whether the noisy Anti-Ulez / CAZ lobbies are worth listening to more than frustrated supporters of clean air who stay at home on voting day.
Greg Fell estimates that at least 300 people a year go to an early grave in Sheffield due to air pollution, whereas London Mayor Sadiq Khan reckons 4,000 Londoners a year meet the same fate.
Perhaps it’s worth wondering who those 4,300 people will be in 2024 when our decision makers suggest waiting a bit longer to really change anything.
What’s On Out There (from Sunday 23rd July)
Thanks to the various groups who are sending me event information. It’s the only sure way of appearing here.
If you’re in any group who put on outdoor events and want me to include them, stick them in the comments below as follows: Date, What it is, Online link.
Lots of readers follow up on these events, so it’s worth your while.
Every Morning from Sat 22nd - Animal Orienteering & Summer of Play activities at Longshaw
Every day until Sun 30th July - Butterfly Art exhibition at Rustlings Road Allotment Lane by Greystones Primary School
Sun 23rd - Tramlines!
Sun 23rd - Sheffield Conservation Volunteers work day at Sheffield General Cemetery (from 10am)
Sun 23rd - Holme Moss fell race (£11 - 11am)
Sun 23rd - Gut Level folk music stuff at Sheffield General Cemetery (from 1pm - various prices)
Sun 23rd - Doggy Day at Sheffield Manor Lodge (free, or £4.50 with tour)
Sun 23rd - Botanical Gardens tree walk (£7)
Mon 24th - Fri 28th - Daily health walks in parks and green spaces from Step Out Sheffield, 10 am start
Mon 24th - SRWT Volunteer Day at Kilnhurst Ings
Mon 24th to Thurs 27th - Sheffield Cycle Tours (from Sheffield Station) - (£12-15)
Mon 24th to Thurs 27th - Children and Family actvities at Sheffield Manor Lodge (free, £4.50 for children’s actvities)
Tues 25th - Sheffield Ramblers Walk from Longshaw to Hathersage (via bus from town)
Tues 25th - Free intro to trail running session from Edale station Penny Pot cafe
Tues 25th / Thurs 27th - Green City Action Community Allotments morning sessions, open to all at the Grimesthorpe Road allotments
Tues 25th - Talk on Plants from an insects point of view, NESST, The Psalter
Tues 25th - Walled Garden, Hillsborough Park volunteer work day
Tues 25th / Weds 26th - Child and adult orienteering at Longshaw
Tues 25th / Sat 29th - Learn to Ride cycling sessions at Heeley
Tues 25th / Weds 26th - Summer Holiday Wild Play with SRWT at Ecclesall Woods (£6)
Weds 26th - Sheffield Ramblers walk - Chinley to Edale (train from town)
Weds 26th - Volunteer morning at SRWT Sunnybank nature reserve
Weds 26th - Social walk at Longshaw
Thurs 27th - Life on the Farm day at Our Cow Molly (£4)
Thurs 27th - Stoney Middleton fell race (£6)
Thurs 27th - Painting in the Park (Endcliffe)
Fri 28th - Learn to Ride Cycling at Abbeyfield Park
Fri 28th-Sun 30th - Learn to Scythe at Regather coop at Hazelhurst Lane (£70 / day)
Fri 28th - SRWT Volunteer Work Day: Greno Woods
Sat 29th - Regather Farm open day (Hazelhurst Lane)
Sun 30th - Sounds of Summer Concert at Whirlow Brook Park
Sun 30th - Parents for Future Picnic in Meersbrook Park
Sun 30th - Storrs Woodland Makers Market (£4)
Thanks for reading. And if you’re a regular here, remember our slogan: F.F.S!
That is, Forward to Friends, then Subscribe. (And thanks to the 90+ of you who’ve become full subscribers already.)
It takes time and money to put all this together, and just 200 of you joining our growing band of full subscribers is the simple (and only) way It’s Looking A Bit Black Over Bill’s Mother’s will become sustainable in a world of social media billionaires who care nothing for reliable local news.
Thanks.