‘Children are so excited when they come here’

The two year initiative will cover around 400 acres of land including the Shire Brook Valley and Woodhouse Washlands nature reserves, funded by a £1.1m grant from the government and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, along with £400,000 from local partners including The Environment Agency, South Yorkshire Sustainability Centre, National Grid, Friends of Richmond Park, the South Yorkshire Badger Group, Sheffield Hallam University and Yorkshire Water.

The funding was pulled together by council officers who’ve worked for many years with volunteers from local organisations like the Shire Brook Valley Conservation and Heritage Groups to help restore nature to land once covered by factories, sewage works and collieries.

“I grew up in this area, and it’s come on tremendously,” said Richard Pearson from the Shire Brook Valley Conservation Group, who remembers the modern nature reserve as a sewage works banned to locals when he was a child.

There’ll now be a new family trail and work by education teams to bring the site to life for local families and schoolchildren.

Sheffield Council ranger Nell Dixon showed visitors the old Carr Forge Dam, which will be desilted to encourage wildlife and birds like kingfishers and water rails. She’ll be working on site regularly to help local families learn about the wildlife on their doorstep. Remarking on an earlier Shire Brook summer project she said:

“Children are so excited when they come here, they ask so many questions. One child found a caterpillar two inches long, and he couldn’t believe this bright green creature with a mohican haircut would grow up to be a pale tussock moth. I think the children who came that day will remember that moment for years to come.”

Shire Brook was originally the border stream between Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and after years of industry, work in the area by the council and Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust, along with volunteers, has restored the brook and the surrounding landscape to a series of young woodlands, along with marshes and meadows.

A herd of cattle will also be working on the scheme: by browsing the vegetation and digging up the ground the 20 or so cattle will help insects and plantlife to bloom.

“These cattle are the next best thing to megafauna like bison and elk,” said Sheffield council ecologist Angus Hunter. In the distant past, big plant eaters would wander around the English landscape digging up patches of soil, clearing trees and vegetation, allowing a variety of wildlife habitats to thrive.

“It’s cut and deposit,” said Patrick Gray, grazing manager from Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust, explaining the sustainability credentials of his assistants. The growing herd of Dexter and Highland cattle produce their natural fertiliser after they crop down the brambles and grass, which is created and left on site to do its soil recovery work.

Cattle are also used to improve the soil and landscape at Woodhouse Washlands, where new hedges and fencing will go in to help establish ponds and wetlands. Signs of otters have already been found nearby, and the wet landscape will also benefit birds like kingfishers, herons, warblers and relatively rare wading birds like lapwings and snipe.

Angus Hunter added that work already carried out to build ponds and wetlands in the valley is helping rare Great Crested Newts to slowly spread their populations.

Volunteer Richard Pearson said he was “blown away” by the enthusiasm of so many people and organisations. “People are going to find out about a place that’s been a labour of love for me.”

Improvements to local biodiversity will be monitored, and its hoped more funding will follow if the scheme works as planned. Exciting times for what used to be called Sheffield’s ‘forgotten valley.’