Council move to support river campaigners
Plus counting 🦋 butterflies, good news on city 💨 air quality, 🌌 dark skies and more
Good morning! I’m Sarah Hartley and this is The Northern Eco weekly update. As you’ve received this newsletter then either you subscribed, or someone forwarded it to you. If the latter, then you can click on this handy little button below.
Two North Yorkshire councillors are urging colleagues to take the case for the River Swale to be granted Designated Bathing Water Status (DBWS) to the new environment secretary.
Richmond councillor Stuart Parsons and Colburn’s Kevin Foster will take a motion to the full council next week asking the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to act. The move supports the campaign by Save our Swale (SOS) which is seeking the change in status for the waterway as a way to ensure regular monitoring for pollution is carried out.
A spokeswoman for SOS welcomed the move saying:
“SOS is delighted to have the support of local councillors to obtain DBWS as this is currently the only way a community can get the Environment Agency to do the job SOS has been doing for them - i.e testing the water regularly and publicising the results. We don’t know if under the new government this convoluted arrangement will continue to be necessary to ensure people using the river are kept safe from disease, but until water companies can be properly held to account, we are happy that our local councillors are supporting SOS.”
The SOS campaigners are continuing to lobby and carry out water quality testing but the route to designation looks set to be lengthy after the last government closed the process new applications.
North Yorkshire County Council will hold the Full Council meeting on Wednesday, 24th July from 10.30 am.
Paid subscribers can access our full archive on the campaign by searching for ‘Swale’ here.
In other news
🦋 People have until August 4 to help take stock of the butterfly population across the UK. And local spotters could find they see more species than they might have expected as it seems butterflies are moving north, Mariam Amini from The Guardian reports:
“Scientists are calling on the public to help track how British butterflies are moving north as the climate heats up.
Examining 50 years of data, researchers from the wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation, which runs the annual Big Butterfly Count, have identified a clear northerly shift among many species, including the familiar garden favourites the comma, peacock and holly blue.”
Full instructions on how to take part in the Big Butterfly Count are here.
💦 Still wild swimming? People who spend time in natural waters are being invited to join two university studies to help researchers understand and protect people from the health risks related to pollution. The ‘Poo-Sticks’ project is looking for wild swimmers in rivers, while the BlueAdapt project focuses on people who go in the sea writes Brendan Montague in The Ecologist.
🌌 Night skies over part of the Yorkshire Dales are set to be given extra protection against light pollution, North Yorkshire Council has said. Stricter rules for planning applications in the Upper Nidderdale area, such as limits on the brightness of bulbs being used outside, are to be introduced, reports Thomas Barrett and Michael Hamilton at The BBC.
🚙 Air pollution appears to have fallen across much of Newcastle in the first year of the city’s Clean Air Zone (CAZ) tolls. New figures have revealed a notable drop in the level of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels in the air on Tyneside in 2023. There was a fall in the average NO2 level at all but one of around 70 monitoring locations across Newcastle compared to 2022, according to data published by Newcastle City Council, including around the Tyne Bridge and other well-known pollution hotspots. Full report from Daniel Holland at Chronicle Live.
🩺 North Yorkshire NHS staff are being trained to give 'nature prescriptions’. Healthcare professionals from Richmondshire and Hambleton have taken part in a novel training session on RSPB Nature Prescriptions reports Hannah Chapman at the D&S.
0️⃣ Durham County Council has agreed a new climate plan to achieve Net Zero. The latest plan, covering 2024 to 2027, sets out 232 actions to help the council achieve its targets of reducing council emissions by 80 per cent. More from Bill Edgar at The Northern Echo here.
🦆 Rare ducks which are native to North America have been spotted attempting to breed in East Yorkshire, writes Emily Beament from the Press Association. The male and female blue-winged teal were spotted at Yorkshire Water's Tophill Low nature reserve, near Driffield, on a number of occasions over the past 12 months.
🌏 Climate Action Stokesley & Villages group is holding its Annual General Meeting and shared picnic supper tonight, Tuesday, July 16 at 7.30pm in a farmland setting in Great Ayton. See the website www.casav.uk for location and more information.
The three most clicked links from last week were:
Litter eating shark launched on Leeds Waterfront in UK first
💨 Renewable energy companies have begun work on new onshore windfarms in England for the first time in almost a decade after the new government reversed restrictions the Conservatives had put in place on turbines. At least half a dozen renewables developers have begun identifying potential sites for full-scale windfarms in England reports Jillian Ambrose and Helena Horton at The Guardian.
🎱 A Just Stop Oil protester who jumped onto a snooker table and covered it in orange powder during the World Snooker Championship has been given an 18-month community order, reports Oli Constable for the BBC. Edred Whittingham, 26, disrupted a match at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre. Co-defendant Margaret Reid, 53, from Kendal, in Cumbria, was given a two-year community order and told to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work after being found guilty of attempting to cause criminal damage on another table.
🛤️ Sky News climate reporter Victoria Seabrook has been wading through the data which shows how flooding is impacting the transport infrastructure. She reveals Britain's most cancelled train services due to flooding here.
⛏️ Cumbria coalmine was unlawfully approved, government says. The government will now not be defending two legal challenges by Friends of the Earth and South Lakes Action on Climate Change (Slacc) and has instead informed the court that the decision to grant planning permission should be quashed, reports Helena Horton at The Guardian. The case was still expected to go ahead today unless West Cumbria Mining also concedes.
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