- Council work in partnership with the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust and volunteers to achieve Bee Friendly award for the borough
- Award celebrates bee-friendly initiatives across communities
- Wild About Tamworth volunteers show their passion and hard work protecting nature and biodiversity.
Tamworth Borough Council are delighted to announce they have been awarded The Bee Friendly recognition, for supporting pollinators across the council local nature reserves (LNRs), open spaces and Castle Grounds.
The Bee Friendly Trust award scheme celebrates bee-friendly initiatives in villages, towns, cities, community groups, schools and businesses across England, that support habitat-forming and the creation of new homes for wildlife.
This includes partnerships that help extend pollinator pathways across the country and encourage communities to make positive change to allow bees and other pollinators to thrive.
The council are proud to support pollinators including bees, through specific planting and mowing activities across local nature reserves and open spaces. Through partnership with Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, the council offer volunteering opportunities and programmes to engage young people with the importance of protecting biodiversity and the benefits it brings.
Councillor Dave Foster, portfolio holder for environmental, sustainability, recycling and waste, said: “We’re thrilled to be recognised for this the award and to achieve a ‘Bee Friendly Status’.
“We’d especially like to thank the incredible volunteers at our local nature reserves for their hard work in supporting pollinators in Tamworth. Their passion and dedication shines through and they’ve played a huge role in protecting and regenerating nature and biodiversity in our communities and across the borough.
“In partnership with Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, we’ve engaged our community to improve our wild places to benefit nature. Within our ‘Wild About Tamworth’ initiative, six groups of local volunteers work on our nature reserves to carry out bee friendly activities and planting, to create wildlife corridors for pollinators thrive.
“These sites are only mowed once yearly in August and September to allow the land to regenerate naturally and support pollination.
“Creating self-sustaining areas of biodiversity along with planting perennials in the right places, means more flowers for the bees to pollinate and the need for less human intervention to allow our landscapes to develop naturally. Our volunteer groups are passionate about protecting and enabling biodiversity to thrive and they work extremely hard to do so. They are the real champions of our Bee Friendly activities.”
Alongside local nature reserves, Tamworth Borough Council has green spaces such as the Castle Grounds, where there are 12 perennial areas to encourage pollinators and nine planters containing perennials.
The Castle Grounds sensory gardens also have a variety of bee friendly plant species. The planters have pollen rich plants like lavender and nepeta and a variety of other wildflowers for bees to explore.
Several of the borough’s green spaces are in a Natural England Environmental Stewardship scheme. The scheme offers funding in return for looking after land in a way that benefits the wildlife, landscape and community interest. This funding is used to support activities including protecting and encouraging pollinators like bees.
The council are also partnered with local beekeepers to collect swarms, which help replace and increase bee colonies and encouraged surviving hives to thrive.
Notes:
The Wild About Tamworth initiative offers opportunities for volunteers to work on the local nature reserves and contribute to protecting nature and biodiversity.
The ‘Youth Rangers’ programme connects young people with nature and understanding of the importance of pollinators.
The ‘Wildlings’ programme is for pre-school groups, offering wild activities to learn about pollinators.
Find out more about the Bee Friendly Trust here: https://beefriendlytrust.org/