Yorkshire Dales: New woodland plans to help red squirrels

A red squirrel looking for food ahead of winter in the Widdale Red Squirrel Reserve in North Yorkshire

A new fundraising campaign has been launched to create a new wooded habitat for rare red squirrels in the Yorkshire Dales.

The Woodland Trust is asking the public to help it raise £3.5 million to buy Snaizeholme, which is 550 acres of open landscape near to Hawes.

If the conservation charity is successful in buying the site, it aims to plant trees and help woods naturally re-grow to create new woodland mixed with other habitats such as meadows, grassland and peatland.

The project will protect and expand a nature reserve for rare red squirrels, and also improve the space for otters which also make their home there.

The Woodland Trust are trying to buy this area of land known as Snaizeholme

The money the Woodland Trust hopes to raise would cover the cost not only of the land, but also of the tree planting and woodland regeneration work, which the trust says is much needed in a wider landscape that has less than 5% tree cover.

"It is a great chance to boost biodiversity at a time when the natural world is in crisis. Woodland birds will have a home there for the first time, and open scrub woodland should attract species like the black grouse," said Al Crosby, the Woodland Trust's regional director in the north.

The farmland site is on the open market so the Woodland Trust needs to complete the sale by the end of June.