Northumbrian Water Environmental Partnership

In 2002, Northumberland Wildlife Trust and Northumbrian Water Limited formed a Partnership to deliver conservation work at the 140ha Bakethin Nature Reserve at the northern end of Kielder Reservoir. The work delivered by the partnership, which involved NWT employing a dedicated, full-time officer, soon expanded to include conservation work on other Northumbrian Water sites around Kielder.

Fast-forward 20 years and NWT now carries out work on six sites on NWL’s land across the county, from Cartington Spring near Thropton to Whittle Dene in Tynedale and across to Bakethin at Kielder. These sites contain a mixture of habitat types, such as woodland, meadows and wetlands and support a variety of wildlife from dragonflies to otters.

A team of dedicated volunteers assist NWT’s Officer to carry out a range of habitat maintenance and improvement works as well as helping with visitor access works and species/habitat monitoring. There are also connections with other NWT projects. For example at Bakethin staff and volunteers continue to check the monitoring rafts installed for our watervole projects, Flexigraze provide grazing at Fontburn, Bakethin and Whittle Dene and Red Squirrels Northern England help monitor and maintain squirrel populations around Kielder and at Colt Crag.

In addition to the wildlife benefits, Northumbrian Water recognises the social value of the partnership and greatly values the role of the volunteers in helping to increase the biodiversity across the sites. The increase in the range of partnership work reflects the growing value of the partnership to both organisations and at Kielder the fact we are now looking beyond Bakethin and Kielder Waterside is recognition of the wider landscape scale working which is essential for wildlife.