2010 International Year of Biodiversity
The United Nations has declared 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity, celebrating the variety of life on Earth. The UKs National Parks are proud to be offical partners.
National Parks are Britain's breathing spaces, with a huge mix of habitats and species. Our work is focused on conserving wildlife, from helping individual species like the tiny Dormouse, to looking at whole ecosystems like upland moors.
Here are just a few of the projects we've been working on to help increase biodiversity, and some ideas for how you can get involved.
Places to watch wildlife in National Parks
Watch Rhodri Thomas talk about the work to help habitats and species in the Peak District National Park:
Wetlands - restoring Barton Broad
Over 160 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of mud have been dredged out of Barton Broad.
Restoring clean water is the key to biodiversity in the Broads, which is an internationally important wetland.
The Broads Authority works with water companies and other partners to reduce nutrients getting into the water and dredges up tonnes of nutrient rich mud. Using 'biomanipulation' fish are moved out of some enclosed areas.
Less nutrients and no waterflea-eating fish, leads to less algae and more plants, which leads to more insects, birds and fish.
Get involved!
Come and see Barton Broad, aboard our solar powered boat, Ra. Trips take 75 minutes, leaving from Gay's Straithe.
Tel: 01603 782281for times and bookings.
Ospreys return to the Lake District
Visitors can get a nest-cam view
Bassenthwaite Lake is a National Nature Reserve, and is owned by the Lake District National Park Authority. When a pair of ospreys starting spending the summer at Bassenthwaite, a special nest site was built, hoping they would use it.
In 2001 the ospreys visited again, added sticks to the nest site, and became the first wild ospreys to breed in the Lake District for over 150 years.
The Lake District National Park Authority now works with the Forestry Commission and the RSPB to protect the ospreys, make sure they have suitable hunting habitats and let visitors come and see the birds using special webcams set up at visitor centres.
Get involved!
Watch the osprey webcam - ospreys nest from around Easter to late summer.
More trees please!
Native trees and woodlands support more biodiversity than any other land habitat in the UK.
2009 was the National Park's 60th anniversary. Our staff, volunteers and partners left an anniversary gift of 1000s of new trees, planted as part of the BBC's Tree O'Clock world record.
In other woodlands we encourage coppicing, fencing grazing animals and dead-wood habitiats to increase biodiversity.
Get involved!
Join our National Park volunteers who regularly help plant and manage woodlands
Meadows
We help farmers do less on their fields to encourgage more biodiversity.
In the Yorkshire Dales tractors pull trailer loads of seeding flowers down the valleys to help create new hay meadows. We work with farmers, helping them access grants and paying them for their meadow seeds, to allow them to use less fertilizer and to mow the fields later in the year. Together we've created over 53 hectares of new hay meadows across the Yorkshire Dales.
The grasses and flowers in hay meadows support loads of different insects, butterflies and bees, and the seeds and insects in turn support many species of birds.
Get involved!
Support the work of the Yorkshire Dales Millenium Trust
Further information
- Brecon Beacons - biodiversity
- Broads - biodiversity action plan
- Cairngorms - biodiversity and landscapes
- Dartmoor - biodiversity
- Exmoor - biodiversity
- Lake District - Windermere wildlife
- Loch Lomond and the Trossachs - biodiversity action plan
- New Forest - wildlife
- Northumberland - wildlife and habitats
- North York Moors - biodiversity action plan
- Peak District - biodiversity
- Pembrokeshire Coast - biodiversity
- Snowdonia
- Yorkshire Dales - Nature in the Dales
