Lower Derwent Valley National Nature Reserve near York to get extension

It gives "sanctuary and freedom from disturbance" for treasured wildlife and is enjoyed by nature lovers too.
Lower Derwent Valley National Nature Reserve (NNR) near York. Picture: Mike Cowling.Lower Derwent Valley National Nature Reserve (NNR) near York. Picture: Mike Cowling.
Lower Derwent Valley National Nature Reserve (NNR) near York. Picture: Mike Cowling.

Now Government-sponsored Natural England, in collaboration with the Carstairs Countryside Trust (CCT), yesterday said it would make multiple extensions to the "internationally important" Lower Derwent Valley National Nature Reserve (NNR) near York.

Coinciding with World Wetlands Day yesterday, the update will increase the NNR by almost a third from 466 hectares to 602 hectares.

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However it came ahead of the House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee, which is made up of 16 MPs from various parties including Sheffield Hallam's Labour representative Olivia Blake, today telling the Government that progress has been "painfully slow" in tackling “critical environmental issues like air quality, water quality and wildlife loss” - and that "time is running out" to deal with the environmental crisis.

Ian Carstairs OBE, who founded CCT in 1989 as a rapid response organisation for conservation, was delighted that the Trust was taking part in the extension with Natural England, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

He said: “The Trustees of CCT are pleased to work with Natural England to extend the NNR to benefit society and wildlife, especially as so many people seek the comfort of the natural world in these difficult times.

"At the same time, we are able to help to protect this vulnerable refuge from which nature can be rebuilt back across the countryside.”

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The Lower Derwent Valley has ancient traditionally-farmed hay meadows and Natural England says it is "of international importance".

The reserve and surrounding privately-owned and farmed meadows, known as Ings, stretch for some 12 miles along the river Derwent and the Pocklington Canal.

It offers "crucial areas of sanctuary and freedom from disturbance" to large numbers of breeding and wintering birds, they say.

Lying partly within York, its wildlife spectacles can be enjoyed throughout the year around the valley at key visitor locations including at North Duffield, Wheldrake and Thorganby.

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Describing the Lower Derwent Valley as a "unique historic landscape", Natural England’s senior national nature reserve manager, Craig Ralston said: “Not only does the Lower Derwent Valley support immense wildlife interest, but it stores and slows winter flood winter, locks away carbon and provides agricultural crops and livelihoods.

“With the extension of the NNR we are balancing the provision of sanctuary areas for some of our most threatened wildlife whilst also providing areas were the public can responsibly visit and enjoy the spectacles without disturbance.

"This really is a special day.”

But it comes as the PAC's report suggests that such projects are not currently enough to keep pace with environmental issues facing the UK and the globe.

The Government first set its ambition to improve the natural environment “within a generation” in 2011.

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The 25 Year Environment Plan, published seven years later in 2018, claimed again to set out how Government will improve the environment also “within a generation”.

However the PAC - which has made a series of recommendations to ministers - says the plan does not contain a "coherent set of long-term objectives or interim milestones", and Defra does not have “the clout to lead the rest of Government...hold other departments to account or manage trade-offs between policy areas," it adds.

"Government still does not understand the total costs of delivering its environmental goals, funding has been piecemeal and environmental impacts are still not being taken into account in spending decisions," the committee said to the press.

"It is not clear how much of an additional total £1 billion promised to Defra in the 2020 Spending Review is genuinely new money - it is known to include previously announced increases in flood defence spending spread over the next five years.

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"Ahead of the last Spending Review – in the year the UK was due to host the upcoming COP26 climate change conference - departments struggled to provide the Treasury with requested information about how their proposals would contribute towards the UK’s statutory carbon targets or the 25 Year Plan."

Meg Hillier MP, chairwoman of the PAC, said: “These ‘generations’ will soon be coming of age with no sign of the critical improvements to air and water quality Government has promised them, much less a serious plan to halt environmental destruction.

“Our national environmental response is left to one Department, and months from hosting an international conference on climate change, the Government struggles to determine the environmental impact of its own latest spending round.

"Government must move on from aspirational words and start taking the hard decisions across a wide range of policy areas required to deliver real results – time is running out.”

Defra has been approached for comment.