Tower and Town, August 2020 (view the full edition)Saving Wiltshire Bees
“Imagine trying to travel around Britain if nine out of every ten miles of road just didn’t exist – life would be impossible,” explains Buglife spokesperson Hayley Herridge. “Bees and other pollinators are disappearing from our countryside in part because three million hectares, 97 per cent, of the UK’s wildflower-rich grasslands have been lost since the 1930s”. Three quarters of fruit and vegetables are insect pollinated. Without them, we’d be stuck with beige, bland food with limited nutrients. But this isn't just about us. There are over 250 species of wild bees in the UK and countless species of other pollinators, most of them we know very little about. We want to help people know more about them, support some 'citizen science' to help monitor them and encourage everyone to join in the effort to join up the landscape for them.
Bee-Roadzz and Wiltshire B-lines needs more participants of all sizes to connect and restore wildflower-rich grasslands, from private and community gardens, allotment associations and parish councils, to farmers and large estate owners and corridors such as canals. If you have a garden, or are a landowner or farmer and would like to take part, please contact us at transitionmarlborough.org, go to our Bee Roadzz facebook page and find out more at buglife.org.uk/resources/publications-hub/b-lines-resources/  Milly Carmichael |
Transition Marlborough has joined an ambitious national project to save our pollinating insects. Bee-Roadzz, a Transition Marlborough project, is now encouraging everyone to support the national charity Buglife. They aim to join up the best existing pockets of great pollinator habitat across the country with their project, B-lines (biodiversity lines) [see p.19 for map]. This will create a network of joined-up habitats so insects, including threatened species in small isolated populations, can move more freely around the British countryside, becoming more resilient and building up their numbers. As many as 70 percent of insect species could go extinct if they are stuck within ever decreasing fragments of habitat.
Marlborough is in a crucial position, at a crossroads in the Swindon to Salisbury and Hungerford to Chippenham B-lines insect network, so can all play an important part.