Nature is dying, says the new government. So what is the Outdoor City doing to help it recover?

Good afternoon — and welcome to today’s Tribune.

When you read about the local countryside, it’s often pretty sobering news: the wildlife decline ushered in, in part, by the use of pesticides (and the campaign for Rotherham Council to ban them) or the announcement that 3,000 plant and animal species in Yorkshire are at risk. One small cause for hope is provided by ‘30 by 30’ — the last government’s agreement to commit to the 2022 UN Biodiversity’s plan to protect and conserve a minimum of 30% of land and sea so that it’s good for nature by 2030. One result of this commitment is the South Yorkshire Nature Recovery Strategy — a planning document which sets out a strategy for rewilding South Yorkshire. But what do conservationists think of it? And does it go far enough? We sent writer David Bocking to investigate.

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Your Tribune briefing

✊ Last night, South Yorkshire braced itself for more rioting, with an immigration lawyer’s office on Manchester Road in Sheffield widely circulated as a location the far-right planned to attack. Instead, The Tribune found a major counter-protest of over 1,000 people gathered at the scene. There were chants including “Sheffield will be fascist free”, “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here”, and “Can you hear the fascists sing? I can’t hear a fucking thing”. There was a significant police presence, including riot vans, but no violence took place. Other than one tense moment where the police stopped some people joining the crowd, everything was peaceful. (A legal observer told The Tribune that this was a small group of men in hoodies who looked like they might cause trouble, but were not believed to be there to attack the building.)

🚨 In Rotherham, where there were also rumours of a planned far-right rally, the scene was even quieter. A small crowd of counter-protestors gathered, mostly standing in silence. So far, following the riot on Sunday which targeted a hotel housing asylum seekers, ten people have been charged, including two teenage boys. South Yorkshire Police has also released images of three men it hopes the public can help to identify.

🔍 Now Then has taken aim at the Yorkshire Post, publishing a lengthy investigation of the publication’s ties to the controversial Drax power plant in North Yorkshire. “What happens to the credibility of a local paper,” their piece asks, “when it takes sponsorship and advertising money from a ‘renewable’ power plant whose green credentials have been widely questioned?” The paper’s editor-in-chief James Mitchinson insists that none of the Yorkshire Post’s partnerships with local businesses compromise their journalism “in any way shape or form”.

🎪 The Lowedges & S8 Festival returns this weekend, taking place from noon until 6pm on Sunday. This year’s many attractions include a classic car show, a dog show, two re-enactment battles (Medieval and Viking respectively) and a birds of prey display. Find out more here.

What is the Outdoor City doing to help nature recover?

Pay attention. There’s a reason you wake, adrenaline pumping, at an unfamiliar noise outside your bedroom door in the dead of night. And those strange shadows and snapping twigs in the dark woodland on your way home on a winter’s evening will always make your heart jump for good reason. 

We humans are accustomed to wild things. Our race memory, or thousands of years of evolution, is still ready to save us from bears or boars or sabre-toothed tigers creeping into our caves or hiding in the trees ready to kill us and our families.

Take a close look next time you’re out in Sheffield’s wilder places and you might see how our landscape and the humans who’ve lived there are intertwined. Sunken tracks through the fields and forests are where generations of farmers have since medieval times taken livestock to market, and villagers to church. Trees with a handful of trunks were worked for centuries, coppiced for fences and hurdles, and the light let in by the woodworkers allowed grasses and wildflowers to bloom, gathering in insects and spiders, bringing songbirds to eat the insects and hawks to eat the songbirds. And hidden under the trees in some of our wild places are boulders carved into swirling mysterious shapes thousands of years ago, to celebrate angels and demons we can barely imagine, or the spirits of strange animals long gone.

In those days, there were bears and wolves, wild pigs and huge horned cattle living here, and our hills and valleys would have teemed with insects, beasts and reptiles. Today, rustling and clicking in the back offices of our two local authorities, is a dry-sounding document that aims to take account of all this, finally getting to its feet, sniffing the air of public opinion and preparing to come and find you. The South Yorkshire Nature Recovery Strategy (NRS) is almost ready for public consultation.