An invitation to our Volunteer Working Party for St Mary’s Graveyard, Molescroft Road – Thurs 13 Aug 26

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Molescroft Wildlife Network is arranging an event to clear the vegetation from the graveyard after it has been cut by ERYC. This enables native flowers to thrive. Tasks will include raking the arisings, wheelbarrowing them to a trailer and they will be taken to a local community allotment compost heap.

This is part of the implementation of the Caring for God’s Acre Management plan for this special place which was funded by Molescroft Parish Council.

If you would like to come along and help please email molescroftwn@gmail.com. This is to ensure that:

  1. We borrow enough equipment
  2. We can send you information nearer the time
  3. We can let you know if weather conditions mean that we have to postpone

Please forward this information to anyone you think may be interested in joining.

Sorry, this event is not suitable for children, if you are interested in family events please email us so we can add you to the mailing list for other events which will be relevant.

We would like to thank Molescroft Parish Council, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, ERYC, Molescroft Grange Community Allotments, Bleach Yard Stables, St Mary’s Church and Dogger Bank Wind Farm Ltd for their assistance.

Nature Isn’t Neat: Backing the Call to Stop Spraying Weedkiller Around Our Trees

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You’ve almost certainly walked past it without giving it a second thought. A young street tree on a grass verge, and around its base a perfect, bleached ring of dead, brown grass, the unmistakable signature of a herbicide sprayer. It looks tidy, in a municipal sort of way. We’ve been trained to read it as “managed”, “cared for”, “neat”. At Molescroft Wildlife Network, we’d ask you to read it differently. That brown ring isn’t a sign of care. It’s a small chemical wound, repeated thousands of times across the East Riding, in exactly the places where we should be working hardest to give nature a foothold.

That’s why we’re adding our name, and asking you to add yours, to the 38 Degrees petition calling on East Riding of Yorkshire Council to stop spraying glyphosate and other weedkillers around trees.

The chemical in question is almost always glyphosate, the active ingredient in products like Roundup and the most widely used herbicide on the planet. For decades the reassuring story has been simple: glyphosate blocks an enzyme (called EPSPS, part of the shikimate pathway) that exists only in plants and microbes, not in animals, so, the argument went, it can’t harm wildlife, pets or people.

The problem is that “not in animals” turned out to be the wrong place to look. Animals don’t have that enzyme — but the bacteria living inside them do. And it’s there that the trouble starts.

In 2018, researchers at the University of Texas published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that honey bees exposed to glyphosate, at concentrations they’d realistically meet on roadsides, in gardens and along field edges, lost key members of their gut microbiome. Bees with disrupted gut bacteria were significantly more likely to die when they later encountered a common pathogen. Follow-up work has found similar effects in bumblebees, our most important wild pollinators here in East Riding.

We want to be precise, glyphosate is not “the main cause” of pollinator decline, habitat loss, other pesticides and disease all play their part. But it is now well documented as one more pressure on insects that are already in serious trouble. When there’s an easy way to remove a pressure, you remove it.

Yes, longer grass around a tree base looks different from a sprayed ring. But “different” is not “dangerous”, and it certainly isn’t “unsightly” once you retrain your eye. A tussock of grass and a few buttercups at the foot of a street tree is not neglect, it’s a tiny pocket of habitat: nectar for insects, cover for invertebrates, a seed source for birds. The tidy brown ring is the genuinely unnatural sight, once you know what it costs.

And where grass genuinely does need controlling, for sightlines at a junction, say, or to protect a very young tree’s stem from strimmer damage, there are straightforward alternatives that the petition rightly highlights:

  • Hand-cutting and strimming do the job perfectly well around trees.
  • Mulch mats or a ring of woodchip suppress competing growth, retain moisture and actively help a young tree — the opposite of spraying.
  • Where any herbicide is judged unavoidable, targeted spot-treatment with a spray-gun is vastly preferable to blanket spraying from a quad-bike, which kills wide areas of grass that never needed touching in the first place.

None of this is radical. Please head over to 38 Degrees to sign the petition!

MWN Bat Walk: 9.30pm Wed 3rd June

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Hello Friends of Molescroft Wildlife Network,

We are very pleased to invite you to come and join the East Yorkshire Bat Group and Molescroft Wildlife Network for a free evening guided bat walk.

This is on Wed 3 June, 9.30 pm around St Mary’s Graveyard, Molescroft Road, Beverley.

We will have special bat detectors to allow us to listen out for the bats as they fly around hunting for insects

Please note that:

  • The route will include some inclines and uneven paths
  • Children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult
  • It is recommended to bring a torch and wrap up warm

‘Hedgehog Highways’ to be installed in the East Riding

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Some good news from the burrow. East Riding of Yorkshire Council has taken delivery of more than 180 “Hedgehog Highway” frames, donated by Howden-based manufacturer Timloc and made entirely from recycled materials and Molescroft Wildlife Network is one of the groups handing them out.

If you’ve not seen one, the idea is beautifully simple. A 13cm × 13cm hole cut in the bottom of a fence or gate, finished with one of these neat frames, lets a hedgehog pass safely from garden to garden. Hogs roam over a mile a night looking for food, water, a mate and somewhere to nest, and our fenced-off gardens have quietly turned the neighbourhood into a maze of dead ends. A single gap changes that but a row of them creates a genuine network of opportunity for our spiny friends.

It matters because hedgehogs are in real trouble. Once a familiar sight in every garden, now a species in steep decline, and a flagship for the Hull and East Yorkshire Local Nature Recovery Strategy.

Want one? Come and find us, we’ve got frames to give away. You don’t need to wait, either: a hog-sized hole costs nothing to cut today. And whether you fit a frame or just spot a hog snuffling through, please log it on the Big Hedgehog Map at bighedgehogmap.org.

MWN are finalists for the HEY Charity Awards!

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These HEY Charity Awards are for inspiring individuals and organisations who have been recognised for the outstanding impact they make across our communities, going above and beyond to drive positive change and make a real difference.

We knew we’d been nominated but we are now finalists in the Environment Category! A big thank you to HEY Smile for this recognition!

Want to help your local wildlife and community?

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Join COEXIST as a volunteer! 

Posted on behalf of the COEXIST network, this is not an MWN related activity!

Local volunteers are invited to take part in COEXIST, a nationwide programme monitoring human-wildlife encounters in the UK. COEXIST takes a multidisciplinary approach, combining cutting-edge technology, field methods, and community engagement to understand where and why these encounters occur. We bring together local residents, universities, councils, and wildlife  organisations to support human-wildlife coexistence in an ever-changing world. 

What will volunteers do? You will join our team and be trained to help monitor wildlife behaviour in your local area, such as deploying and checking equipment (e.g., trail cameras, puzzle feeders, or acoustic recorders). You will also help us distribute fliers within these same locations to encourage residents to complete a short (<10min) online questionnaire about their experiences and attitudes towards local wildlife. You will help record local environmental characteristics, such as the presence of food, shelter, and other resources available to wildlife. Finally, you will help manually code and upload your observations to our secure online dashboard where councils and conservation partners can use the data to help guide locally tailored strategies to promote coexistence. All equipment will be provided, and we will train you through a series of workshops, video tutorials, and online guides before you begin.

Why it matters: Urban growth, climate change, and nature restoration are changing where wildlife live in the UK, creating more opportunities for people and wildlife to encounter each other. While many human-wildlife encounters can be positive or neutral (e.g., bird watching), others can lead to conflict (e.g., animals raiding gardens, bins and chicken coops). Nationally, human-wildlife conflicts cost millions (£) per year to manage, and yet many of these costs could be avoided through early detection and simple preventative measures where wildlife and people can both benefit. Local authorities, such as councils and conservation organisations, often lack the resources to systematically monitor these human-wildlife interactions, limiting their ability to help communities respond with early, locally tailored strategies to reduce conflict and promote coexistence. By enabling residents to take an active role in helping to collect data within the local area, COEXIST opens a two-way dialogue between communities and local authorities, helping to guide more effective, targeted actions while giving residents an active voice in shaping how wildlife and communities thrive together.

How much time is required? Volunteers will typically spend approximately 25 hours in total (~2-4 hours per week for 8 weeks) during April and May, which includes your training. While the time commitment per week is important to ensure data are collected reliably and on time, individual tasks can be broken into short, flexible sessions, and the specific days and times can be arranged to suit your availability within each week.

Who can volunteer? You must (1) be 18 years or older, (2) have a smartphone and computer for data collection, (3) be able to travel (~1-5km) to one of our study sites within your local area, (4) be able to commit ~2-4 hrs per week for 8 weeks, (5) be physically able and willing to work safely during daylight hours and in variable weather, and (6) have a keen interest in wildlife and outdoor activities.

What’s in it for you? Volunteering with COEXIST lets you make a real difference to local wildlife and your community. By joining the team, your observations will help local authorities, such as city councils and conservation organisations, understand where and why human-wildlife interactions occur. This information can then be used to help inform effective and environmentally responsible strategies to support people and wildlife living together. You will gain hands-on experience in wildlife monitoring and citizen science. You will see how data and technology are used to understand and reduce human-wildlife conflicts, and you will develop practical skills in animal observation, field methodology, and environmental problem-solving with other like-minded volunteers.

Ethics and governance. COEXIST is ethically approved by the University of Hull and complies with all GDPR and animal welfare regulations from the UK government. All study sites have landowner permission and local authority involvement.

Interested? Questions about volunteering for COEXIST should be directed to Dr Blake Morton (b.morton@hull.ac.uk) at the University of Hull. If you wish to volunteer, you will be required to read and sign a volunteer notice, which provides more information and sets out a number of policies and guidelines. Dr Morton’s staff profile can be found at: https://www.hull.ac.uk/staff-directory/blake-morton

Last Chance: Have Your Say on the Dogger Bank South Community Fund

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The developers behind the proposed Dogger Bank South offshore wind farms are asking local residents what they’d like to see from a community benefit fund, and the consultation closes TODAY!

What’s This All About?

The Dogger Bank South (DBS) projects are a pair of proposed offshore wind farms being developed by RWE and Masdar, located over 100km off the East Yorkshire coast in the North Sea. If approved and built, they could generate enough renewable electricity to power around three million homes.

As part of the development, RWE and Masdar are proposing a community fund of up to £1 million for communities near the projects’ onshore infrastructure. The onshore converter stations would be located to the southwest of Beverley, near the village of Bentley, so it’s the communities in that area who stand to benefit.

Why Should Wildlife Lovers Care?

This is where it gets interesting for us. The consultation is asking local people what the fund should be spent on and how it should be managed. That means there’s a real opportunity here to push for nature recovery, habitat restoration, wildlife-friendly green spaces, or community growing projects or whatever matters most to your local area.

Community funds like these don’t come along every day, and if local wildlife and conservation groups make their voices heard, there’s genuine potential to secure funding that benefits both people and nature. Think pollinator corridors, wetland restoration, community orchards, wildlife education programmes — the possibilities are exciting.

How to Have Your Say

You can fill in the online survey here: Dogger Bank South Community Fund Consultation