RSPB Dearne Valley Old Moor
RSPB Dearne Valley Old Moor is an 89-hectare wetlands nature reserve. It lies on the junction of the A633 and A6195 roads and is bordered by the Trans Pennine Trail long-distance path. It is managed to benefit bitterns, breeding waders and wintering golden plovers.
About RSPB Dearne Valley Old Moor in brief
RSPB Dearne Valley Old Moor is an 89-hectare wetlands nature reserve. It lies on the junction of the A633 and A6195 roads and is bordered by the Trans Pennine Trail long-distance path. It is managed to benefit bitterns, breeding waders such as lapwings, redshanks and avocets, and wintering golden plovers. Passerine birds include a small colony of tree sparrows and good numbers of willow tits, thriving here despite a steep decline elsewhere in the UK. In 2018, the reserve had about 100,000 visits. The reserve may benefit in the future from new habitat creation beyond the reserve and improved accessibility, although there is also a potential threat to the reserve from climate change and flooding. The Dearne valley was formerly a major coal mining area, with several accessible seams of high-quality coal, and in 1950s more than 32,000 colliers worked in its 30 pits. The miners’ strike of 1984 was the first sign of a national programme of pit closures in UK that led to the loss of 11,000 jobs in the industry. The name Old Moor may derive from an archaic meaning of moor, referring to a marshy area that was more difficult to cultivate than the alluvium of the flood plain. It had been enclosed as a 103 hectares farm by 1757, when it was owned by the Marquess of Rockingham. Over the next two centuries, especially following the arrival of the railway in 1840, the area became dominated by its heavy industries.
In 1998, Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council created the reserve, which opened in 1998. The RSPB took over management of the site in 2003 and developed it further, with funding from several sources including the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It was eventually eventually opened in 2000, with the help of a lottery grant of nearly £800,000, then developed further in 2002. The site is an ‘Urban Gateway’ site with facilities intended to attract visitors, particularly families. The area has been settled continuously since prehistoric times, with villages developing on the drier sandstone ridges above the floodplain from at least the late Saxon period. Most of the area lies on coal measures, comprising Carboniferous sandstone and slate with seams of coal. The valleys contain fertile alluvia deposited by their rivers, and the sandstone forms rolling ridges cut by the broad floodplains. In the 1990s, the WWT was also working on London Wetland Centre, and pulled out of the Old Moor project since it lacked the resources to cope with two large projects. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds suggested adding reed beds to the then-struggling bittern population; only 11 males were present in one UK at one point in 1990s. By 2000, only 10,000 visitors annually had visited the site, which was offered to the council by the Metropolitan Borough.
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This page is based on the article RSPB Dearne Valley Old Moor published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 02, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
