BEAVER LA REVOLUTION!
This chap could return with £75,000 appeal to purchase bog
A £75,000 fundraising appeal has been started to create an ‘oasis for wildlife’ in North Staffordshire that could see the return of a locally extinct creature after 400 years.
Staffordshire Wildlife Trust wants to turn Craddocks Moss, a ‘fragile’ 47-acre site near Madeley into a haven for threatened species of animal.
The scheme is part of a national movement called 30by30 which intends to raise £30million and kickstart nature’s recovery across 30 per cent of the UK’S land and sea by the year 2030.
Craddock Moss is a lowland raised bog, and recent on-site recovery work has shown it could once again be a precious habitat where nature thrives.
Purchasing the site will also help the Wildlife Trust towards its aim to achieve a Nature Recovery Network in Staffordshire – a network that will improve wildlife connections, allowing species to move freely across a wider area.
The intention is to help wildlife flourish while also bringing nature closer to people.
Craddocks Moss is already home to rare plants such as sphagnum mosses and cottongrass, and the four-spotted chaser dragonfly is also making a cautious return.
The Trust’s vision for Craddocks Moss includes attracting endangered and long-absent species such as the water vole, and the insecteating sundew plant, birds such as willow tit and curlew, the rare bog bush cricket, the white-faced darter dragonfly and the pearl-bordered fritillary butterfly.
And perhaps most excitingly of all, the charity believes Craddocks Moss could be the perfect location for reintroducing beavers to the county after four centuries of local extinction.
Jeff Sim, above, senior
conservation manager for Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, said: “Craddocks Moss is an extremely precious site which, if we manage to acquire, will help save one of our rarest and most delicate habitats.
“The Trust’s ecologists are certain that, with our help, many rare species will return to the site, while it could be the perfect habitat for us to reintroduce beavers to our county.
“We are seeing that nature has suffered serious decline for decades – but sites like this can begin to help us reverse that trend.
“Buying Craddocks Moss will also strengthen the Nature Recovery Network that Staffordshire’s wildlife desperately needs and adding more wildlife connections is the reason why our movement is ambitiously aiming for 30 per cent of the county’s land and water to be given back to nature by 2030.”
To contribute to the Trust’s appeal and to help save Craddocks Moss, visit www.crowdfunder.co.uk/savecraddocks-moss