Pollinator Parks added to B-Line map

The B-Lines network for England, which aims to help restore populations of insects, has added the Climate Action North Pollinator Parks project located at the North East BIC to its map.

B-Lines was launched by conservation charity Buglife and will create a vast interconnected web of potential and existing wildflower habitats across the country in response to catastrophic declines of wild pollinators in recent years.

The Pollinator Parks initiative aims to redress the alarming decline in wild pollinators by rewilding and transforming outdoor areas on retail and business parks into ecological oases to help bees, butterflies and birds thrive and flourish.

The first area was launched in Spring 2019 at the BIC in Sunderland when a volunteer group, sponsored by Sunderland Enterprise Park and the BIC created two small gardens and a mini-meadow, planting around 35 different species of British native ‘pollinator-friendly’ wildflowers including Red Campion, Moth Mullein, Primrose, Oxeye Daisy, Basil, and Dandelion.

Two bird boxes were also installed in nearby trees and within a month of doing so a family of Blue Tits moved in and successfully nested. 

The area is now established as a safe haven for the struggling insect populations; the perennials are flowering really well each year, and the unmown mini-meadow saw six Bee Orchids naturally bloom.

Buglife provided a map of the wildflower network and is asking communities, businesses, public bodies and farmers, as well as keen gardeners, to help create wildflower areas along the B-Lines.

The charity is also urging people to help make gardens and outdoor spaces more wildlife-friendly by growing more shrubs, trees and flowers, cutting the grass less often, not disturbing insect nest and hibernation spots and not using pesticides.

Recently, a major report by the Wildlife Trusts highlighted the scale of the plight faced by insects due to human activity. It said that over the last 48 years, 41 per cent of the UK’s wildlife species had suffered decreases in numbers with main causes of this decline including habitat loss and industrial-scale use of pesticides.

Pollinators play a crucial role in food production and agriculture and are also vital to our ecosystem. We all have a clear responsibility to nurture biodiversity and our Pollinator Parks initiative demonstrates how we can practically support and care for our wildlife and repair broken ecosystems.

Read our guest blog on the Buglife website here.

To set up a Pollinator Park area or learn more about sponsorship opportunities, get in touch.

The time for talking is over, today we need to act.