Yorkshire Wildlife Trust launches 'Wild Ingleborough' appeal

Ingleborough is well known to hill walkers as one of Yorkshire’s Three Peaks.

But the mountain and the area around it also make up a unique limestone landscape that is home to some of the country’s rarest plants.

It is estimated that Ingleborough and its surrounding landscape is home to a third of the UK’s plant species.

“Ingleborough is the only place in the world that the tiny white stars of Yorkshire sandwort are found, just one of four places in the UK you can see Teesdale violets, and one of just two places in Yorkshire where purple saxifrage grows,” said a spokesperson for the York-based Yorkshire Wildlife Trust which this week launched its Wild Ingleborough appeal.

“Ingleborough’s limestone pavements host rare holly ferns, lichens and mosses, as well as patches of sweet-smelling wild thyme and rock-rose, the main food source of the rare northern brown argus butterfly.”

Mountain Pansies at the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust's recently-acquired Ashes Shaw nature reserve at Ingleborough (Image: John Potter)

The trouble is that many of the rare species and habitats found on Ingleborough are confined to a few pockets of space across the mountain.

This makes them highly vulnerable to more severe weather and the effects of climate change.

The Wildlife Trust is already cultivating the rarest of Ingleborough’s limestone flowers, shrubs and trees at a special montane nursery, where volunteers will help nurture plants from seed so that they can be planted back out into the landscape.

The Wild Ingleborough partnership team have also trialled harvesting and spraying fern spores from rare ferns directly into the limestone pavement grykes - and have abseiled down some of the mountain’s cliff faces to collect seeds from hard-to-reach plants.

Volunteers taking part in the restoration of a dry stone wall at Ashes Shaw Nature Reserve, Ingleborough, North Yorkshire, UK (Image: WWF)

But the Trust wants to do more – which is why it has launched its Wild Ingleborough appeal.

It wants to raise cash so that, working with partners and landowners, it can connect up wilder spaces - from the valleys right up to the top of Ingleborough itself – to make the habitats and the wild plants and creatures that flourish there less vulnerable.

The aim, the Trust says, will be to ‘restore and manage these connected places in such a way that these rarer species are given the best chance of survival’.

Natural England recently purchased new land to extend the Ingleborough National Nature Reserve.

And the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust itself recently bought two new nature reserves in the area – Ashes Shaw and Bellfield’s Pasture – with support from the local community.

Bellfields Pasture (Image: John Potter)

Work has also begun to restore and reconnect 1,300 hectares of fragmented limestone grassland, upland woodland, peatland and limestone pavement.

“Ingleborough provides a critical haven for some of Yorkshire’s rarest limestone plants to flourish, and has the potential to be one of the most important limestone landscapes in the world,” said Rachael Bice, the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust's chief executive.

“But we are now in a race against time to save some of the last remnants of this area’s most vulnerable plants.”

A view of Ingleborough (Image: Judith Greaves)

To donate to the Wild Ingleborough appeal visit www.ywt.org.uk/Wild-Ingleborough or call 01904 659570 and select option 1.

For one week only, between April 18 and April 25, any donations will be doubled – up to a maximum of £10,000 – thanks to Big Give’s Green Match campaign. Between those dates make your donation via the Big Give website - bit.ly/WI-Big-Give - to make sure your donation is match-funded.