By Jill Stocks
Horsforth Climate Action volunteers and local residents joined project workers from the University of Leeds and Aire Rivers Trust for a ‘bioblitz’ along the Horsforth Nature Corridor.
Beginning with a “walk and chalk” along the corridor recording bugs, plants and wildlife along the way, the bioblitz ended at Low Lane Rec, where there are a number of wildflower nature patches, and there was a demonstration of river fly monitoring in Oil Mill Beck.
The Horsforth Nature Corridor runs from Hunger Hills Woods down past Horsforth School and St Margaret’s Church, across Long Row onto Broadgate Lane past Broadgate Primary and St Mary’s school, down past St James’ Church on to Low Lane and then on to Low Lane Recreation Ground.
Horsforth Climate Actions Jenny Morgan has been employed with some funding from the University of Leeds to help co-ordinate the creation of the corridor. She told us: “Today’s event is just to see what we can spot on the nature corridor as we’re going. We’ve made it as family friendly as possible and we’ve got spotter sheets.
“We’re encouraging people to sign up to the inaturalist app and there’s actually a Horsforth Nature Corridor project on there that people can sign up to. So they can carry on spotting things even after today.
“We have Sam Riley-Gunn from the Aire River Trust and he’s doing river fly monitoring which some of the people here do every month and test what nature they can find in the river and what wildlife they can find in the river. They’ve come along today so that people can have a look and see what they do.”
River Six is an ecologist working with Leeds University Nature Neighbourhood Project. He said: “We’re just recording everything we can. Every plant, every bee, every beetle, all life on the corridor. We get a baseline now and then in a few years we will repeat it again and hopefully see a lot more wildlife than we saw this time.
“The beck is included on our corridor so it’s a good opportunity to see what’s going on underneath the water whilst we’ve been looking at the flowers and the bees and everything.”
Penny Pinn from Horsforth Climate Action is one of those who volunteers to monitor the beck.
She told us: “I was trained up last summer to do it. It’s a national project, river fly monitoring, and there’s eight target species of invertebrates that you’re looking for and they are all very sensitive to pollution so you do it for six months every month, and you get given a trigger level which is a baseline level.
“With things on land everything dies off over winter but in the beck if there was ice on the beck there was still life in the beck and we were still getting good samples. After six months you then get a set of base levels so if one month you did it and it falls it then its an indication that there’s a pollution incident that they can then investigate.
“The project is called ‘Life in Leeds Becks’ and it’s funded by LNER. The Aire Rivers Trust looks at the whole of the River Aire catchment but they previously concentrated more on Keighley and Bradford but now they’re working more in Leeds so North Leeds becks from here to Roundhay.”
Sam Riley-Gunn is Citizen Science Officer for Aire Rivers Trust. He said: “As part of this bioblitz I’ve brought a sample of bugs out of the beck. I work for Aire Rivers Trust and there’s about twenty volunteers across Leeds that sample the bugs to tell us if there’s pollution. There’s certain species that disappear when pollution gets concentrated.
“This beck, Oil MIll Beck, is actually quite good. It scores in North Leeds as one of the best becks. I’m here to demonstrate what we do, show everybody what’s in their river.”
You can find out more about Horsforth Climate Action, what they do in the community and how you can get involved on their website and Facebook page.
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