Charity to help relieve flooding

Shropshire Wildlife Trust says a smallholding it has bought in the middle of the county's flood plain could hold the key to managing the River Severn's flooding problems.

The charity wants to turn Holly Banks, near Melverley, into an experimental wetland area.

It says that it could act as a pilot scheme for helping to relieve flooding downstream and will also play a major role in encouraging lapwing and curlew to return to the Shropshire plain.

The Environment Agency recently published its strategic document for managing the flood waters of the Severn. One of the possibilities is to keep flood water on land upstream of Shrewsbury to prevent homes and businesses being affected further downstream.

Today the trust said its work at Holly Banks would never solve the flooding problem, but its president Lady Veronica Cossons said it could play its part.

"Forty-five acres is not a big landholding but properly managed it might be able to hold back enough water to keep the flood water down by a crucial few millimetres," she said.

She added the aim of the project was to keep the ground wet through spring and summer, which would be good for lapwing and curlew, then allow the water to seep away in the autumn so it is ready to soak up the winter flood water.

The trust fears the two birds, once seen in large numbers in Shropshire, could be extinct in the county by 2015.

Shropshire Wildlife Trust had to act quickly to buy Holly Banks. Although the trust had a grant from the Waterloo Foundation it also had to use £25,000 of its reserves. It has now launched an appeal to put the cash back into reserves.