Noddle Hill - Credit Faye Palmer
Hull’s Green Arc Project is working to connect and improve urban greenspaces in Hull
“It is great to be working with a wide range of partners on this exciting venture. Local communities in Hull are keen to see their greenspace managed for wildlife in a way that everyone can enjoy. By linking areas up across the city species will be able to move through the city more easily and people will be able to visit the sites to spot wildlife on their doorstep.” Jon Traill, Conservation Project Manager
Hull is a growing city. The pressure for new housing and industrial sites is ever present. But there is still a need for green spaces – for wildlife and for people. Our Hull Green Arc project is aiming to create a sweeping, wildlife-rich swathe of green areas within this built-up environment: a Living Landscape where wildlife can flourish and which people of all ages can enjoy.
The River Hull, Holderness Drain and the Outer Humber are already exceedingly important areas for biodiversity. This project is taking the first steps in creating a special corridor along which wildlife can travel in an otherwise increasingly disconnected urban landscape. This corridor follows the River Hull through the city centre and Holderness Drain to the east of the city.
Six sites have been identified to form the Green Arc; these were chosen due to the existing natural link between them in the form of habitat improvement and habitat creation providing a huge opportunity to improve the biodiversity of the area collectively, rather than individually.
By connecting habitat at a landscape scale in this co-ordinated way, wildlife can spread and re-colonise areas – the city’s biodiversity value will increase immensely and local people and visitors will have more places to visit and enjoy.
The project is not just helping wildlife. The Hull Green Arc project is set to enhance flood protection and water regulation ecosystem services. By increasing the extent of wetland habitat through creation of new ponds, fen, wet grassland and reedbed and the better management of the existing local wetlands, the city will have more areas of water storage, important in times of high rainfall, and be better buffered from flooding.
Thanks must go to the SITA enriching nature fund and Biffaward landfill funding to enable the work programme to be carried out.
Contact
For more information please contact Jon Traill or Tony Martin on 01482 441013 or by email.
