|
|
|
Vale Royal Borough Council has teamed up with Cheshire Wildlife Trust, The Mersey Forest, Cheshire County Council and the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers to make sure that the white-letter hairstreak butterfly flourishes in Vale Royal. The butterfly relies on elm trees for its food source and life cycle, therefore the spread of, and continued devastation caused by Dutch elm disease has been a disaster for the butterfly population.
Now the butterfly is being given a second chance with a successful funding bid for the Vale Royal White-letter Hairstreak Project. The Project has received £22330 funding from SITA Trust, through the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme. The SITA Trust distributes funding through the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme. Funding is available for community and environmental improvement projects within ten miles of an active SITA UK landfill site. Since 1997 the Trust has allocated over £45M to hundreds of projects across the UK. For further information about how to apply for funding please call the Trust on (01454) 262 910 or visit www.sitatrust.org.uk
Cllr Mark Stocks said “Vale Royal Borough Council is an active contributor to the Cheshire Region Biodiversity Partnership and this is a fine example of how this partnership can work together to forward biodiversity enhancement across the Borough”
Charlotte Harris, Local Biodiversity Action Plan Coordinator at Cheshire Wildlife Trust said, “The population of white-letter hairstreak at Leftwich has regional importance and therefore is a key population to preserve and increase. The money will be spent on planting elm trees at locations where the butterfly is known to occur, and growing on a stock of disease resistant trees to plant out in the future.”
The project was officially launched with the first elm planting event at Leftwich Meadows on Saturday 25 November. .
For further details contact Elaine Tatham, Nature Conservation Officer 01606 867748.
|
|
|||||||