Natural England launched its successful LIFE+ bid at Hatfields
on the 17th October 2013. The launch was attended by a number of
local politicians and conservation bodies as well as national
representtatives from Natural England and the Environment
Agency.
Presentations were given by Caroline Flint MP, who stressed the
importance of Thorne Moors as a conservation cause celebre
and a carbon sink and Linda McAvan MEP who
focussed on the importance of peatlands in general as global carbon
stores and how this places a special responsibility on the UK,
which contains a high proportion of entire EU peatland
resource.
Kieran Sheehan of the Doncaster East IDB Thorne Moors Water
Level Management Plan (WLMP) and JBA Consulting gave a brief tour de
force of the habitats on the bog and the aims of the WLMP and
how they gel with those of the LIFE+ project. Helen Kirk of the Thorne
and Hatfield Moors Conservation Forum talked eloquently about
the moors and their recent history and the benefits of partnership
working and waht can be gained from it in terms of added value,
citing the Inkle Moor Invertebrate Survey as an example.
Julian Small from Natural England expanded on the theme of
partnership working forward and his colleague, Sue Plaxton, talked
about the role of the Humberhead Levels Partnership in this and
other bids on the Levels and expanded on the amounts of money that
had been brought into the the Levels for conservation gain.
Professor David Hill of
Natural England brought all this together in terms of working for
future generations and David Shaw summed-up thanking the speakers
and everyone for attending.
During the afternoon, a visit was made to the works undertaken
as part of the WLMP on Southern Boundary Drain. Here Darren
Whitaker of the Doncaster East WLMP and JBA Consulting explained
the necessity of the structure, what bit had achieved since its
installation and how this was to be controlled by a state of the
art telemetry system. Details of this were tweeted by
Alastair Driver of the Environment Agency, along with other
points from the event.
The day ended with a vist to Collis' Tram to see
Sphagnum colonisation and a quick look see from the top of
Thorne coal tip, to give an idea of the scale of the site and
extent of the scrub clearance works being funder by LIFE+.
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