Eco Church

* Click here to see upcoming Eco Church events at St John's *

On 14 December 2023 St John's Settle had its assessment to become a Gold Eco Church. (and was given the award).

These pages chart our progress since then - a new page for each year.

Eco-Church 2024 (Includes our history of becoming an Eco-Church)

Eco-Church 2025 (this page)

January: Angela is continuing to monitor the birds in the garden each month. You can see the results here: Bird Results. Click for larger version

These results were used for the Action on Climate Emergency Meeting in our church hall in January when the Millennium Trust came to tell us about thier project rasiing awareness and action on four specieis:

House Sparrow, Starling, House Martin and Swift have all decreased by over 50% in the last 30 years.

In our survey the House Sparrow and Dunnock results were merged because this is how the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Recoording list was presented. However we will record Dunnock and House Sparrow separately from now onwards.

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Transport Survey: Philip carried out the annual questionnaire about transport for the people who come to morning service.

February:-

On 10 February Sally and Judith restarted Eco Explorers . the next meeting will be 10 March. We had activities noticing the progress of spring in the Parish churchyard.

March:

Judith made a large poster of the Lent Carbon Fast poster designed by Angela and Bruce to go on the notice board.

Here is a photo of the YWT Wildlife Gardening award

Judith attended the zoom launch of Operation Noah's next campaign.

April

Judith writes: On 1 April The Churches Together/CCG Walk for the Climate group - walked up Pen y Ghent to look at the Purple Saxifrage. We were lucky - encouraged by Phil Hinde - to get down to Horton in time to catch the bus back to Langliffe. - So we used local transport - though used my car to drive up to Dale Head to colect Phil's car.

We have now had the air-source heat pump delivered which will replace the boiler that heats the church. It still needs to be connected.

May

The first of the month walk was a walk along Watery Lane (Brockhope Lane) to Cleatop Wood (4 miles circular) . On the 3/4 mile along Brockhole Llane we recorded 40 species. In Cleatop Wood, so popular with walkers , we saw .... Seven.

15 people came, though people peeled off to return to Settle at various points. I gave people who passed our list of species.

Picture to come.

The following Thursday Sally and I tokk Eco-Explorers along the first 1/3 mile and added more species to the list - so the total is now over 45.

Picture to come.

May - Church Garden

Steve (our Caretaker) and Ann Martin continue to do sterling work looking after the garden. Tulips are out now.

The new fruit bushes and shrubs have taken well in the "hedge" / alleyway where the big old bushes were removed last month. there are violet flowers there. This narrow alleyway was lightened by the removal of some of the taller bushes - though it is getting darker again as the neighbours bushes have come into leaf.

Jill Tiernan has grown seedlings with the Dementia Forward Group and some have been planted in the Garden.

Angela writes:

I entered our garden for the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Gardening Award again and I'm pleased to say that we have been successful once again.

It was basically a tick box exercise, plus a 300 word statement and photographs.

I concentrated on the 2 aspects of our land management plan, and emphasised the hedgerow and hedgehog theme. (Included photographs of both).

This year the award is more targeted and we've been awarded Silver. Gold is virtually impossible in a small garden. (up to the size of a tennis court). A pond and unmown grass seem to be essential.!!

The Hedgehog House:

Kath Mason has left her trail camera with steve the Caretaker (presumaby it will be stored in the office?) so that we can see what animals use our garden (if any) at night.

We still need to set this up. Angela has arranged with various groups that they will check the hedgehog house for signs of a hedgehog and to replennish the small quantity of food placed there.

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I used our garden as a photo shoot for the books of Mike Berners-Lee who was scheduled to come and talk organised by ACE Settle on 10 May.

Picture to come.

Talk by Mike Berners Lee on "A Climate of Truth"
organised by ACE SETTLE (Action on Climate Emergency)

Over 55 people came to the meeting.

One very useful feature was that I saw Paul Cochrane of Holy Ascension/Ace Settle use two HDMI leads connoected by a booster to connect the laptop at the front of the room with our projector console at the back of the room - something I have wanted to be able to do with Craven Conservation Group for four years but no-one cod tell me how to do it. I strongly recommend we ask the property committee to buy this.

A second was that Elizabeth Smith reinded us all of the importance of writing to our MP about the proposed ammendments to the planning bill to be made this coming week which will remove protection for nature from our planning laws. Firms will be able to dig up or build over areas of high nature conservation interest and just pay a bit of money so that some animals or plants can be moved somewhere else, or some other bit of land can be made into a nature place.

People think that nature gets in the way of planning applictations.

But this is not the case.

Studies on the top development proposals recently that have been held up found that it was NOT nature issues that caused the hold ups at all. Rather things like slow planning procedures, or access or infrastructure or other things. (Think of our own efforts to get permission to put an electricity cable through our own land at St John's so that we can start to use the solar pannels that were put up on our roof)

So I wrote to our MP and I invite other people in the ECO group to do the same. Or should we send a joint letter?

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Air Source Heat Pump.

this has arrived and is in the process of being installed.

Upcoming events:

1 June: The Churches Together/CCG Walk for the Climate group are going to walk somewhere in June..

Sat 20 Sept: "Let's Talk Wild" community event (Followng on from "Let's Talk Rubbish", "Let's Talk Local", "Let's Talk Farming"

Eco-Church 2024 (Includes our history of becoming an Eco-Church)

Eco-Church 2025 (this page)