Plans revealed to create 16 nature reserves

Richard Youle, local democracy reporter

A council plans to declare 16 new local nature reserves and is seeking people’s views to help shape how they are managed.

Work has been going on behind the scenes to whittle down a long list of council-owned sites and 16 areas have now been chosen, although further work is needed.

The 16 shortlisted areas include Coed Bach Park, Pontarddulais, in the north of Swansea, Garth Farm near Ynystawe in the east, cliffs between Mumbles Head and Caswell Bay to the south, and Port Eynon beach and dunes to the west.

Wildlife corridors

A council officer told councillors on the climate change and nature recovery service transformation committee that they would be the first such additions in almost 30 years, spanned the length and breadth of the county and included parks, woodland, coast and lesser-known wildlife corridors.

“Local nature reserves are areas of land protected not just for wildlife but also to ensure in Swansea has access to high-quality green and blue (coastal) spaces close to home,” he said.

They can only be declared, he said, on council-owned or leased land. He added that community feedback will help shape which sites are declared along with a detailed management plan for each of them.

A report before the committee said local nature reserves must have wildlife or natural features of local or special interest. The 16 shortlisted ones are already, wholly or in part, sites of importance of nature conservation – these are non-statutory areas of land with biodiversity value.

Future funding

The hope is that declaring them will further protect their value and potentially unlock future funding. Welsh Government-funded work to carry out ecological surveys, public consultation and management planning is taking place prior to full council agreeing a formal declaration of the sites, ideally by March 2027.

The council is considering declaring the 16 sites in a phased manner or all at once, with the latter the preferred option. Environment regulator Natural Resources Wales, said the report, was supportive in principle.

Committee members spoke in favour of the nature reserves plan and felt schools should be involved in the consultation.

Committee chairwoman, Cllr Rebecca Fogarty, asked if even more areas of land could potentially be declared as reserves in the future. The officer said this was the case. “The community are so supportive of this as a project,” said Cllr Fogarty.

‘A game changer’

Cllr Stuart Rice described the plan as excellent and a “game-changer”, although he said people had questions about the implications. He added: “I’ve been getting quite a lot of feedback. Anything I can do, count me in.”

Deputy council leader David Hopkins, who was attending the meeting to introduce the proposal, said in his mind involving schools “is a must”. Cabinet will hear more about the plans in due course before full council makes a final declaration.

Last month the council said separately that it would design a scheme to restore its three-hectare peatland site at Garth Farm near Ynystawe. Peatland sites store carbon which would otherwise escape as greenhouse gas emissions, and the council said a majority of them in the UK were assessed to be in a degraded state.