PRESS RELEASE

21 June 2006 Cheshire Wildlife Trust launches Cheshire’s first Meres & Mosses Festival

Venues across Cheshire & Shropshire, 8th July- 2nd September 2006

Cheshire Wildlife Trust is preparing the region for its first Meres & Mosses Festival. Organised along with Shropshire Wildlife Trust, the festival aims to highlight the importance and unique quality of Cheshire’s internationally renowned habitats.

The festival will also form part of the BBC Breathing Places initiative, designed to improve local wildlife conditions and encourage communities to engage in conservation activity.

From guided walks, dragonfly and damselfly identification and printmaking workshops to den building and bug hunting, the month will feature events suitable for everyone. Meres and Mosses Month will culminate in the Great Meres and Mosses Family Festival at Cholmondeley Castle’s Deer Park Mere on 27th and Monday 28th August.

Cheshire Wildlife Trust’s Karen Taylor, comments, “Many of Cheshire’s meres and mosses have international protection and provide some of the region’s most environmentally valuable habitat, but few people are aware of the significance of these lakes, ponds and bogs on their doorstep. This festival is a way of celebrating the vital contribution of our wetlands to the region’s environment and raising interest in their importance.

“Our ‘Meres and Mosses Country’ was formed by glacial meltwater at the end of the last Ice Age, 12,000 years ago. Cheshire’s meres and mosses now provide homes for some of the county’s most unusual and endangered wildlife, including black-necked grebes and the rare white-faced darter dragonfly.”

Cheshire’s meres and mosses are regarded as being of international significance by the Network of European Wetlands. They also represent a significant contribution to Cheshire’s cultural and historical landscape, with the Oakmere dugout boat and Lindow Man both recovered from Cheshire peat bogs in recent times.

Meres and Mosses Month is part-funded by the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF) of the EU, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) through the Northern Marches–England Leader+ programme.

For a full calendar of events taking place throughout Meres and Mosses Month, visit www.meresandmossesmonth.info

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