Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and Highway Maintenance Area 12.

Brockadale Magnesium Limestone Habitat

	Brockadale Nature Reserve is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) comprising 49 hectares of unusually diverse habitats; including ancient woodland, traditional meadows, magnesium limestone grassland and the River Went combining to make this reserve a very popular beauty spot with local people. Public access to the site is good and it has great potential to become a flagship reserve. The screes and crags of the south facing valley side of the Brockadale form a warm microclimate which supports the nationally vulnerable snail ‘Truncutellina Cylindrica’, six-belted clearwing moth and other nationally scarce species.
A team of volunteers from Carillion joined the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust on a workday in November 2002 to carry out Scrub clearance. Following hard work, invasive growth has been cut back in areas covering approximately 3ha, making it easier for grassland species to spread and flourish. Contractors have been employed to erect protective fencing in areas of the reserve to allow grazing animals to be more effectively controlled. A flock of Hebridean sheep grazing the site will help to control regrowth in most areas but where the slopes are too steep to be grazed, local volunteers will need to get involved. Surveys to establish the size of the rare population of ‘Truncutellina Cylindrica’ snail and other invertebrates of the site began in November but unfortunately were delayed by ill health. The work has continued through the spring and summer of this year. A site visit by a group of experts, part of the Yorkshire Naturalists Union, will also contribute to the main survey.