Northern Powergrid, the company responsible for keeping the lights on for 8 million customers across the North East, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, is set to help wildlife charity Buglife create a network of wildflowers stretching across the UK to help pollinators.
The electricity distributor, with its network of more than 63,000 substations and some 60,000 miles of overhead power lines and underground cables spanning 9,650 square miles, is looking at how it can help Buglife’s campaign to create more ‘B-Lines’ across the region.
B-Lines are a network of wildflower rich areas which provide important habitat for bees, butterflies and other insect pollinators, enabling wildlife to move across the landscape and making local areas more attractive for people to live and work in.
Paul Evans, B-Lines Manager at Buglife, said: “It’s fantastic to be working with Northern Powergrid and exploring the opportunities its extensive power network holds to help us create vitally important areas for our pollinators and other wildlife.
“One of every three mouthfuls of our food and eight out of ten of our wildflowers depends on pollination by bees, butterflies and other insect pollinators, but we are losing many of these creatures as the wildflowers they depend on for food disappear from our countryside and towns. It’s more important than ever to ensure that we are able to link wildflower rich areas together to provide food, homes and networks for our pollinating insects and other wildlife.”
Gordon Walker, Environmental Manager at Northern Powergrid, said: “We’re really excited to be working with Buglife and are looking at how we can help them with their campaign to build more B-Lines across the region.
“We have thousands of substations across our network and we’re working with Buglife to identify locations for future Habitat Management Plans which will create areas of flower-rich grassland, whilst enhancing the ecological value of our sites. We’re also looking at how we carry out reinstatement work after large projects to enable us to routinely include habitats that will help encourage and support pollinators and local wildlife.”
To find out more about B-Lines and how to make a difference to bees, butterflies and hoverflies visit /b-lines-hub.
