The Trustees of the Friends of the Lower Derwent Valley Conservation Group and the Carstairs Countryside Trust in association with Natural England held a Nature Recovery event on Saturday 30 September at the Yorkshire Air Museum gather to launch and share Harleston's Nature Recovery concept across the York, Pocklington and Selby area.
An audience of more than 70 parish councillors and members of the community heard about the experiences of invited speakers explaining what they are doing to support nature recovery.
The focus of the seminar was to show how ordinary people can help shape the national nature recovery agenda. Ian Carstairs and Trevor Graham from Harleston in Norfolk set the scene explaining the role of the town council and and how the local community had responded to champion Nature Recovery in the Parish. Christian Vassey, from Wheldrake highlighted the work the local parish near York is carrying out to bring back wildflowers on roadside verges. Beki Hagger and Nicola Ward leading on nature recovery for St Nick's charity - a York based environmental group local community - infectiously injected their enthusiasm for the natural world and making it better throughout the City of York.
The concept for Nature Recovery ... WeCan is very simple. We all do what we can to help nature.. We work together and share ideas. We put a common badge to our actions. Every positive thing we do to help the natural world, from feeding the birds and planting wildflowers to leaving rough areas in gardens, they all count. Small statements added together can make a big statement. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
This is a community driven, non-bureaucratic effort where everyone has a role to play. There was a hope and optimism that this could be a blueprint for other towns and parishes. It could form the bottom-up element for the government's Local Nature Recovery Strategies across the country.
Nature Recovery will become part of everything we do. By coming together, we can make a difference. The time is right. The time is now. We must act. And together … ‘We Can’ deliver ‘Nature Recovery without limits and without borders’. It is up to us.