Almost £500,000 of funding secured for Whitchurch nature reserve project

Shropshire Wildlife Trust is hoping to buy, restore and maintain the site at the former Furber’s Breakers Yard in Whixall, near Whitchurch.

The majority of the funding for the scrapyard clearance is now largely in place with due to the EU LIFE programme, Heritage Lottery Fund, Tesco Bags for Life and Restored Earth.

However, Shropshire Wildlife Trust is still fundraising to support rehabilitation of wildlife and create visitor facilities on the site after it has been cleared.

The project is being run in partnership between Natural England, Natural Resources Wales and Shropshire Wildlife Trust, and team members have been trying to come up with inventive ways of reusing some of the 100,000 tyres that still litter the site.

The trust is currently making characters out of the waste ahead of this month's MereFest in Ellesmere to promote the scrapyard restoration project to the community.

They are made of tyres, old headlights, caravan windows and car window trims.

Sara Pearce, from Shropshire Wildlife Trust, said: “We are promoting the scrapyard challenge project at this year’s MereFest event in Ellesmere on September 16.

“We wanted to come up with a display that was fun and engaging for people to visit to find out about what’s going on. It’s a mammoth task clearing up the site and we thought we could use some minions to help.”

So far, additional investigation has gone on over the summer to make sure that the extent of contamination is fully understood before any clean up activity is started.

Working with guidance from the Environment Agency and Shropshire Council, test pits have been dug to find out what pollution has leaked into the ground.

Sara added: “The results show that there is surprisingly little contamination below ground, what is there has been locked up by the remaining peat.

“There is one hotspot of oil based pollution in the ground, where the old car crusher used to be, that will be dealt with carefully; but, other than it’s largely general rubbish, car parts and left over tyres. There’s still a lot of it though.”

Shropshire Wildlife Trust has appointed a part-time project manager to oversee the contracting and waste removal from the site.

A semi-retired waste management consultant from the Wem area, Gary Grantham, has stepped up to the job.

Jan McKelvely, conservation manager at Shropshire Wildlife Trust. said: “Gary has been volunteering on the scrapyard clean up group for the past year, because of his personal passion for wildlife and the Marches Mosses. He has been invaluable in donating his time and expertise to supporting the project team in developing really robust plans to clear the site and manage the associated risks. We’re delighted to have him on board now to guide the project through next critical stages.”