We need your help to raise funds for Yorkshire's wildlife. If together we can raise £16,453, we can secure a further £164,530!

Your donation is worth 10 times more to Yorkshire's wildlife.

The Trust’s staff team have been busy fundraising for money to spend on our work to improve the habitats and facilities of our wonderful nature reserves. We have put together applications to three Landfill Communites Fund grant schemes in the last couple of months, to make improvements at Wheldrake Ings near York, North Cave Wetlands near Hull and working on a suite of magnesian limestone grassland sites in South Yorkshire.  

These grant schemes are all part of the Landfill Communities Fund. One of the rules of the scheme is that every grant must be released by a contribution of 10% from a third party. We are allowed to gather together third party donations and send one cheque from Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.

The exciting and unique thing about this appeal is that for every £1 you donate, £10 will be released for Yorkshire’s wildlife. Therefore, your donation will really go a long way and make a big difference, no matter how large or small:

• £10 turns into £100 – this will fund 18 metres of fencing for Wheldrake Ings
• £50 turns into £500 – this will fund a new drinking area for livestock, vital for looking after our limestone grasslands
• £100 turns into £1,000 – this will fund our new bridge to the new North Cave Wetlands viewing area

The Trust has to secure these donations before it can secure these three important grants – we hope you can help! If our grant applications fail, we will use the money raised to help deliver the projects as intended.

 

Amazing Grazing: Wheldrake Floodplain Meadow Project – Application to Biffa Award for £47,081

Appeal Target: £4,708

Wheldrake Ings is a spectacular site containing one of the best floodplain meadows in the UK and also providing refuge to internationally important numbers of wintering and migrant birds. To create the optimal conditions for the stunning range of plants and wildflowers within the meadows and for the wading birds such as curlew, redshank and lapwing that all breed here, we must graze the meadows in late summer, once they have been cut for hay. Without good quality perimeter fencing this is very difficult and as a consequence, the meadows have only been grazed sporadically. With your help, we hope to secure this large grant from Biffa Award which will help us manage this beautiful site in an effective and efficient way.

North Cave Wetlands: Step Into Nature – Application to WREN for £60,576

Appeal Target: £6,057

North Cave Wetlands is rapidly becoming one of the largest and most-visited wetland nature reserves in Yorkshire. This fabulous site offers visitors the chance to see avocets and common terns up close, along with a wide range of other wetland species, including large numbers of damselflies and dragonflies. For those of you that have visited you will have enjoyed the bird hides and Angie’s Wild Bird Café, but possibly not enjoyed visiting the rather dark temporary toilet! We are applying to WREN for a grant to create a viewing area, which will enable you to enjoy a cup of tea and a slice of cake whilst overlooking one of the main lagoons, teeming with wildlife. We also plan to open two state of the art composting toilets, which will mean visitors may have longer, more comfortable visits.

Loving Your Local Limestone – Application to SITA Trust for £56,873

Appeal Target: £5,687

Building on previous work done by the Trust on magnesian limestone grassland, this project will present a new angle for developing this habitat by engaging local communities to provide long-term sustainability to the project. We have applied to SITA Trust to help fund a programme of restoration including the removal of bushes and trees encroaching on to flower-filled grasslands and the erection of new fencing and other structures to enable grazing by sheep and cattle.

In conjunction with this habitat work, sustainability will be achieved by forming local groups and providing training to skill communities in livestock checking and performing necessary habitat maintenance work beyond the project’s timescales.

This project will also look to provide more connectivity for these habitats by piloting, in conjunction with Doncaster Council, the restoration of the grassland on 2 large sections of road verge; an approach that could be rolled out beyond this project if successful.

 

 

If we exceed our target, we will use the funds to undertake further work on these and other Trust nature reserves. Biffa Award, WREN and SITA Trust all distribute grants as part of the Landfill Communities Fund, regulated by Entrust. Each scheme requires a contributing third party amount of ten per cent of the grant value plus a small percentage as an administration fee. This money must be raised to release the grants from these schemes.

 

We hope you will make a donation today to help us release these major grants.