Big changes are happening at Adel Dam nature reserve as the Trust makes the entrance more welcoming with information and a covered area. Interpretation and wildlife information will be arriving inside the new accessible hide, with friendly nuthatches already a regular visitor.
A little gem of a woodland and wetland nature reserve, Adel Dam is a quiet oasis at the south east end of Golden Acre Park lake in Leeds. The reserve is ideal for peaceful woodland walks and bird watching, with lovely views over a small lake and pond where kingfishers and mandarin ducks, along with woodpeckers, can be seen.
The Trust will be installing a board walk at the far side of the reserve where it currently gets very wet underfoot. There will be new wildlife-watching opportunities including a viewing screen over the lake out-flow to watch water-bound wildlife, and a new bird feeding area so that visitors are able to watch birds from the new hide. The Trust hope to announce completion of the work in the next few months.
Karen McDiarmid, reserve manager, said, “We are absolutely delighted with the work so far at Adel Dam, all thanks to generous funding from Biffa Award. It’s a beautiful reserve and a lovely extension of woodlands walks for those visiting Golden Acre Park, so we wanted to make the entrance, paths and hides more welcoming and accessible to our visitors. We’re excited for the improvements that ongoing works will make to our visitors’ experience of the reserve, and we thank them for their patience and following safety advice while we make these changes.”
Biffa Award is a multi-million pound fund that helps to build communities and transform lives through awarding grants to communities and environmental projects across the UK. The funding was intending to help us deliver simple infrastructure improvements to the reserve in order to accommodate growing visitor numbers, cater for an audience with more diverse needs and interests, and improve access around site, while also helping to protect the wildlife on the reserve. Work on the site has been undertaken by Green Future Building.
Adel Dam nature reserve
Adel Dam nature reserve was once an operational dam to the water power industry. It then became a central feature of a Victorian Garden, which saw the planting of many exotic trees that can be seen today in their majestic maturity. Managed as a nature reserve since 1968, the gently shelving edges and muddy margins of the central lake provide valuable feeding area for a variety of waterfowl throughout the year. The reserve is unusual in that it combines both dry and wet woodland types - the latter being an increasingly rare habitat, vital for a great number of invertebrate species. Find out more about the reserve here: https://www.ywt.org.uk/nature-reserves/adel-dam-nature-reserve.
Biffa Award
Since 1997, Biffa Award has awarded grants totalling more than £180 million to thousands of worthwhile community and environmental projects across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The programme administers money donated by Biffa Group Ltd through the Landfill Communities Fund. www.biffa-award.org
Landfill Communities Fund
The Landfill Communities Fund (LCF) is an innovative tax credit scheme enabling operators (LOs) to contribute money to organisations enrolled with ENTRUST as Environmental Bodies (EBs). EBs use this funding for a wide range of community and environmental projects in the vicinity of landfill sites. LOs are able to claim a credit (currently 4.2%) against their landfill tax liability for 90% of the contributions they make. Since its inception in 1996, over £1.4 billion has been spent on more than 51,000 projects across the UK. For further information please visit www.entrust.org.uk or see HMRC’s general guide to landfill tax.