Lifelines for nature

It’s all part of our work to restore more vital canal habitats, stop wildlife being lost, and reverse a nature crisis which has left one in six species in danger of extinction in the UK.

In East Manchester, we’re joining forces with local councils and other conservation partners to improve the entire catchment area of the Medlock Valley, a wedge of precious green space heading out towards Oldham, between the Rochdale Canal to the North and the Ashton Canal to the South.

Thanks to a £1.2 million Species Survival Fund grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, our local team, headed by environmental scientist Nidal Ahmed, is improving towpath grasslands with native wildflowers, revitalising canal banks for aquatic plants, water insects, and fish, and enhancing canal side hedgerows and woods over the course of this year.

In total, Nidal and his team hope to improve over 17.5 km of canal to bring more biodiversity back to the heart of the city. “For wildlife, it isn’t just a canal, says Nidal, “but a lifeline; a connecting habitat that links all the green spaces in the Medlock valley together. By helping wildlife travel across the valley, the canals help to make local wildlife stronger, more diverse and more resilient. At the same time, we can create amazing green spaces that local people can use to get out into the wider countryside.”

Yet it’s no easy task to look after these man-made habitats for nature. Take grasslands along the towpath for example.

If left alone, they would be taken over by brambles, scrub, trees, and litter. That’s why Nidal’s team, contractors and volunteers are clearing the overgrowth away and sowing the remaining soils with native wildflowers like yarrow, kidney vetch, ladies bed straw, ox eye daisy, birds foot trefoil, cow slips and meadow buttercups. In turn, this should encourage pollinators like bees and butterflies to move in.

It might seem odd, but native wildflowers need poor-quality soil to thrive. So, by ‘cutting and collecting’ the overgrowth twice a year in spring and summer, Nidal and the team hope to create the perfect conditions for the wildflower seeds and bulbs they’ve planted to thrive. His team of contractors are doing all the heavy lifting to cut and clear, while volunteers and corporate supporters are coming in to plant wildflowers and new trees in both our woodlands and hedgerows. They are aiming to plant 100 new trees by the end of the project.  

On banksides, Nidal has also been supported by people taking part in the Ministry of Justice Community Payback Scheme, under which offenders give their time back to the community, as a form of restorative justice. The unpaid work they do on canal banks will encourage aquatic plants that oxygenate the water, bringing in water insects that fish and mammals like bats love to feed on. Plus, the more life there is in the water, the cleaner and clearer it gets for us all to enjoy.

Parts of the Rochdale Canal are also designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Special Areas of Conservation (SAC), thanks to the presence of floating water plantain (luronium natans), a beautiful but rare native aquatic plant that Nidal is hoping to conserve and spread. He’s gained permission to take cuttings from the canal and grow them on in a custom pond at one of the Canal and River Trusts vital yards, before replanting them more widely along the canal.

Finally, in the winter months to come, the team plans to improve 450 metres of hedgerow, filling in gaps by learning traditional hedge-laying techniques and creating more nesting and feeding habitats for a whole array of birds like blackbirds, robins, chaffinches, and sparrows. Hedgehogs and small rodents also love to forage on autumn hedge berries, while pollinating insects thrive on spring blossom.

It’s this kind of skilled, physical, all-year-round work that makes all our canals beautiful but rare lifelines for wildlife.