Scarborough Borough Council

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Wetland heritage survey is launched

A wetland heritage survey has been launched to find out what people know of the wildlife value and landscape history of the local area.  The valuable results will provide feedback to the Wetland Project to guide further landscape partnership work in the Vale of Pickering.

The consultation survey has been put together by Scarborough Borough Council’s Wetland Project Officer, Tim Burkinshaw and Hugo Hughes, an undergraduate Horticulture and Garden Design student of Myerscough College, Lancashire who is interested in discovering people's perception and understanding of wetland heritage using the Vale of Pickering as a case study.  

Tim Burkinshaw, Scarborough Borough Council’s Wetland Project Officer explains how the survey came about: "I was really pleased when Hugo asked me for help with his survey idea about wetlands.  He was interested in people’s perceptions of wetland areas and whether they value them.  We decided to focus on the Vale of Pickering in particular as there has been a great deal of interest in this area as an under-appreciated floodplain landscape."

Hugo Hughes added: "We hope that this survey will reveal how much local people know about the Vale of Pickering's wetland heritage as it is a tremendously important landscape and we suspect that very few people are aware of its significance, even those living in it or nearby.

“I’m very passionate about biodiversity and heritage conservation and I understand how important people are to the future of both.  I really want the people of this fantastically diverse area to engage with the project and I hope to gain as many responses as possible.”

Over the last four years Tim Burkinshaw has been involved with farmers in The Carrs area at the eastern part of the vale, through the Cayton and Flixton Carrs Wetland Project.  The project has been quietly building a network of farm management schemes to restore and protect wet grassland habitat and heritage features through Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreements.  These are agreements of ten years between the landowners and Natural England, which focus on features of heritage, landscape or conservation value.

The Cayton and Flixton Carrs Partnership has eleven farm schemes signed up, from Sherburn to Muston, with wetland restoration underway on 330 hectares (815 acres) of land.

To speak to Hugo Hughes about the survey or to obtain a paper copy, email thevopwetlandproject@hotmail.co.uk or call 07528 701111.  You can also visit
www.facebook.com/pages/Wetland-Heritage-Project/281398205244279

Paper copies of the survey can also be collected from and returned to the council’s Customer First centre on St Nicholas Street, Scarborough or any of the tourist information centres in Scarborough, Whitby or Filey.