Askham Bog, York: The battle against a drier future at 'Cathedral of nature conservation’

It’s a race day on nearby Knavesmire and Askham Bog nature reserve is surrounded on two sides by queuing traffic and on its other, as the land has been since Victorian times, a railway line.

However, upon entering the haven, thoughts of the gridlock rapidly recede in an environment with an atmosphere which could be bottled and marketed to those who struggle to sleep.

Heralded “a cathedral of nature conservation” by Sir David Attenborough, its managers Yorkshire Wildlife Trust are hoping to increase access and enthuse more people to visit the reserve the charity formed in 1946 to conserve.

The site’s importance had been identified in 1915, in a pioneering inventory by Charles Rothschild of 284 sites across the British Isles considered "worthy of preservation".

Leading a tour of the new-look reserve, David Craven, the trust’s Head of Operations in East Yorkshire, said: “Even then Askham Bog was recognised as this incredibly ecologically rich and diverse place which wasn’t being managed for nature, it was starting to be quite bounded in with the railway line. York didn’t have a nature reserve, so the Rowntree and Terry families bought the site and gifted it to the city.”

Some up to 800 species of moth have been identified at the reserve. "The diversity of the site is just ridiculous”, says David.

To mark the trust’s 70th annivesary the haven has been reopened following a £400,000 revamp, with a wheelchair-friendly raised boardwalk, made from recycled plastic for durability, stretching for a kilometre around the site. Interpretation boards have been re-written to reflect the most recent thinking.

Near the start of the boardwalk there’s a dead tree killed by ash dieback which has been carved into a totem pole-like sculpture featuring owls, roe deer and the array of fauna found at the reserve, including a siskin, a type of finch large flocks of which visit Askham Bog.

As a former plantation woodland, the trust’s team of volunteers and staff work to limit the tree cover to maintain the site as a bog, opening meadow areas up. "When there were steam trains passing, every now and then you’d get a spark and it would set the woodland off. Clearly a bunch of the trees went, but it kept most of the interesting ecology of the site going. People love coming here for the woodland and because they will see birds, but fundamentally the thing that makes Askham Bog most important is the botanical richness and the insects that depend on it.”

While the reserve is effectively an island the trust works with its neighbours, such as the council and a golf club, to boost connectivity. “If you have an island things become a little stale”, David adds. He points towards an area, perhaps of about two acres, that has been cleared, enabling bog myrtle to flourish. He said: “It’s a plant that doesn’t otherwise have big colonies around here. There’s a whole bunch of insect and moth species dependent on it. It’s out in that section where we have the slender sedge flowering, which is one of these once-in-a-generation occurences. It was a species we thought lost. Normally you get one or two flowering spikes and it had over 1,000.”

As brightly coloured dragonflies hover, David then becomes particularly animated pointing out mature specimens of one of the reserve’s star species – royal ferns. Vanishingly rare in Yorkshire, the species was identified at Askham Bog two centuries ago and due to pteridomania or fern fever during the Victorian era, York residents dug them up from the bog to replant them in their gardens. The bare peat at the haven has helped royal ferns thrive in the area and botanists believe the oldest two specimens, named Grandpa and Grandma, may be older than York Minster. David says: “A lot of ferns you’ll see the spores under the leaf, but this forms this tip and it’s how it reproduces. A fern is a living fossil. They’re one of these great historical survivors.”

His attention turns to a patch of saw sedge, also known as cutting grass, another rare and unusual species which is still often used by thatchers. “If you touch it in the wrong direction you’ll regret it, it will slice your finger.”

Cattle are brought in to graze later in the year. We experimented with goats for the first time this year, we’ve had ponies in the past as well. The goats did very well, they will graze plants that other animals won’t eat.

Askham Bog has struggled in recent years with increasingly unpredictable dry periods that risk damaging its vital peat habitat. The trust is raising money to manage scrub, create more ponds and survey how wildlife has responded on-site to the hotter weather. David says: "As Askham Bog does have this risk of drying it means more tree and scrub will take over and if that happens you’ll losing everything that gives it the importance that it has.”