Talks.
All Scheduled Talks.
The Yorkshire Dales Moorland Group was established in 2015 along with many other regional groups across England and Scotland. The group consists of the gamekeepers from a collection of rural estates within the Yorkshire Dales. In this talk, members of the Yorkshire Dales Moorland Group will take us through the ups and downs of life as a gamekeeper. The talk will cover topics such as habitat management and creation, predator control and explain some of the fantastic conservation projects the group are involved in. These include Curlew head starting, Merlin and Osprey monitoring and many other activities.
The talk will cover the history of The Folly, Settle’s only Grade I listed building, and its owners from the late 17th century to the present, explaining its many uses from farm house to fish and chip shop. Now the flagship building of the North Craven Building Preservation Trust and home to the Museum of North Craven Life, a major programme of restoration will begin in 2026, enabling the Trust to unravel some of the mysteries of its construction.
In this talk, Flo Blackbourn will talk about Curlews in the UK, the issues they face, and what can be done to help them. Specifically, she will discuss the work of charity Curlew Action, which raises awareness of the issues and brings together stakeholders from all different backgrounds with a part to play in Curlew recovery. Curlews are a much-loved species, but with a surprisingly high number of people in the UK not knowing what a Curlew is, Curlew Action focuses not just on the bird itself, but on other waders, the importance of healthy habitats, and the wider need for improved nature education in our society.
Villages can become lost, abandoned or destroyed over the ages for many reasons. This talk will bring to life two villages - Lodge in Nidderdale, North Yorkshire and El Acebuchal in Frigiliana, Spain. By looking at the lives of the villagers in each location we can see the trauma that they went through during their removal from their homes and livelihoods.
A talk to update on one of the most ambitious upland, nature recovery projects in England. Located in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales, spanning 561ha across a mosaic of habitats. Nearly 3 years on from starting work on the ground, this talk will take us through the vision for the site, where the project is up to now and the journey that has been taken to get to where the project is at today. With tree planting now complete, the first round of peatland restoration wrapped up and a significant change in grazing regimes underway, to name just a few land management interventions that are leading to significant landscape change within the Snaizeholme valley
A review of the work of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority carry out for and with farmers and land managers within the National Park. The work encourages farmers and land managers to farm with nature, be resilient to climate change and have a profitable business whilst keeping our air and water clean.
Grass Wood is the local Yorkshire Wildlife Trust nature reserve. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (a SSSI) due the importance of its botany and of considerable natural history interest. Grass Wood also contains a rich range and large number of items of archaeological interest reflecting a probable 2000 years of human activity. These are of intrinsic interest, documenting a long period of social change and include two Scheduled Ancient Monuments (SAMs). Collectively, these archaeological remains form a real management challenge. This talk will review archaeology within Grass Wood – who found it, what they found, and what they made of it. It will conclude by looking at the results of two recent professional surveys of the SAMs.
The upland landscape around Ingleborough contains a classic example of a Karst landscape, and one of the UK’s largest and most famous cave resources. Over the past 60 years cavers have reported large numbers of archaeological finds from these caves, ranging in date from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Early Medieval period. The finds include human and animal remains, lithics, pottery and metalwork. The caves, and the landscape they sit in, are of very high archaeological and palaeoenvironmental significance and are the focus of the ‘Overground-Underground’ project. This is funded by the Foundation for Common Land as part of its ‘Our Common Cause’ project. This year on the project we have assessed human and animal remains from cave sites within the study area and carried out new radiocarbon and stable isotope analysis on 30 samples from 12 of these sites. Results of these analyses, alongside previously published data, allow more detailed understandings of cave use and the wider environment in prehistory.