YWT Wild Events Guide

The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust have just published their 2024 “Wild Events Guide” that runs from April through to September this year.

Brimming and buzzing with exciting places to explore across Yorkshire and stunning wildlife to discover with the YWT team. Find glimmering glow worms in Leeds, enjoy the soothing sounds of the dawn chorus in Doncaster or meet Flamborough’s colourful puffins.

Download the guide from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.

The Great Big Nature Survey

The Wildlife Trusts want to hear your opinions on some of the biggest questions surrounding nature and our collective role in caring for it.

  • How often do you spend time in nature, if at all?
  • Is nature important to you? If so, how important?
  • What, if any, roles should people, business, and government have in managing nature?

The Wildlife Trusts are running this survey to find out what people in the UK really think about nature and how we, as a society, should protect it. Results also help The Wildlife Trusts to hold the government to account over its environmental policies and priorities.

Please take the time to fill in the survey!

The Nextdoor Nature Hub

The Wildlife Trusts has a really great set of resources for how to help nature in your neighbourhood at the Nextdoor Nature Hub. Obviously the easiest way to help out in Molescroft is to join the Molescroft Wildlife Network, but if you’re not in Molescroft Parish you will find all kinds of useful links from how to make birdboxes, to how to develop community groups focused on nature, and see amazing stories about local action for a nature positive world.

‘Exciting year’ for wildlife sightings in Yorkshire

As we look forward to 2024 (wait, what do you mean it’s already here!?), a positive story about wildlife in Yorkshire was published by the BBC before Christmas looking back at 2023.

The “exciting sightings” are from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and include sightings of pine martens, otters and ospreys, showing that there is hope for biodiversity in Yorkshire, if we are prepared to work for it.

Bird feeding is not only for the birds

The Wildlife Society has a great post on the benefits of feeding birds, not only benefits the birds (especially in the lean winter months) but also has a mesurable beneficial effect on the psychology of those people who love feeding our feathered friends.

However, during outbreaks of avian influenza, some organisations were cautioning against feeding wild birds in order to stop disease transmission. The interplay of disease, wellbeing and policy are explored in a paper in “People and Nature“.

12 Days Wild, a winter wildlife challenge

12 Days Wild is a festive nature challenge, encouraging people to do one wild thing a day from the 25th December to the 5th January each year.

In the quiet days between Christmas and New Year, winter wildlife is just waiting to be explored. Your wild acts could be little things to help nature, like recycling your Christmas tree or feeding the birds, or ways to connect to the natural world, like taking in the calm of stargazing.

The 12 Days Wild Challenge is an initiative of the Wildlife Trusts and you can sign up to participate here.