Project Snapshot

Project title:

Top of the class

Programme: Heritage Grants
Applicant: The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)
Grant awarded: £402,000

The Dearne Valley wetlands near Barnsley are teeming with wildlife. Following our grant of £1 million for conservation work and a new visitor centre at Old Moor reserve, we are helping the RSPB to turn the whole valley into a ‘living classroom’. Led by trained ‘field teachers’, school groups are exploring the valley’s different habitats – including open water and floodplain grasslands, UK BAP priority habitats. Teachers find the carefully tailored links to the National Curriculum ‘really valuable’, says RSPB education officer Kevin Moore. ‘We’ve had a great take-up. Our first-year target was 1,500 kids, but we soon doubled that.’

As part of the project, local people are also being encouraged to find out more about their natural heritage and develop the skills and confidence to take part in managing it. It is hoped that this will help to secure the future of the valley’s threatened habitats and declining species such as lapwing, snipe and redshank.

A school group exploring Dearne Valley wetlands' different habitats

Sector

Land and Biodiversity

Activity

Conservation