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Take a look, through some of the common species of wildlife that live in the South Yorkshire area around Sheffield and Rotherham.
A recently extended patch of heathland and woodland, neighbouring Wyming Brook.
Information and resources about actions you can take for nature's recovery in Sheffield and Rotherham.
Our Acorn Fund is a pot of money allocated specifically to help release money from the Landfill Communities Fund. Your donation can be the key to unlocking funding worth thousands of pounds to make a huge difference for local wildlife.
We are working to make Ughill Farm a model for how farming and nature can thrive together. By restoring habitats, improving soil health, and adopting flexible farming practices, we’re showing that farming can be both productive and environmentally responsible. Over time we hope Ughill becomes an incredible showcase of sustainable farming, the impact of which will ripple out across the landscape.
The Trust is already working with a number of farms in the area on a DEFRA Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS) Test & Trial. We are part of an existing farm cluster group and have built relationships with the local farming community. Owning, managing and using this land for nature friendly farming, will make a significant contribution to our ambition of ensuring 30% of land and water is good for nature by 2030.
Over winter our team continued developing nature-friendly farming at Ughill by creating new wetland habitat, supporting wildlife around young woodland, and beginning restoration work on the Furnace Hill Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).
These improvements are designed to strengthen habitats across the farm and support a wider range of species over time.
A major focus this winter has been the creation of new wetland habitat.
This has included “daylighting” old land drains across the farm. Many historic drains were installed to move water quickly off farmland, but some have now begun to collapse or are no longer needed. By carefully digging up sections of these drains, we can bring the water they carry back to the surface.
This process allows new small streams, boggy areas and wet ground to develop naturally. Some areas will hold water permanently, while others will be seasonally wet depending on rainfall. The wetlands are partly fed by two natural springs on the farm, as well as rainwater running down from the hillside.
Wet areas like these are incredibly valuable for wildlife, supporting insects, amphibians and birds that depend on damp ground and shallow water.
Alongside the wetland work, six new ponds and scrapes have been created within the wetland area.
These were delivered by Wildscapes through the District Level Licensing scheme for Great Crested Newts. While it is unlikely that great crested newts will colonise these particular ponds, they are expected to provide excellent habitat for common frogs, toads and other amphibians.
The work included the creation of three large ponds and three smaller scrapes, providing a range of water depths and conditions that will support wildlife throughout the year.
We have also been enhancing habitat around the young woodland by veteranising existing mature trees.
Veteranisation involves carefully adding features to trees that would normally only appear in very old or naturally dying trees. This might include creating small cavities, splits or areas of decaying wood.
These features provide important habitat for insects, which in turn supports birds and bats. Some of the structures created can also offer potential roosting spots for bats.
By adding these characteristics now, we can help speed up the development of the rich habitats normally associated with ancient woodland trees.
Work has also begun to improve the condition of Furnace Hill SSSI, an important moorland habitat within the farm.
Dense vegetation dominated by Molinia grass and other coarse grasses has gradually taken over parts of the moorland. Over winter we began flailing back these areas to reduce their dominance and create space for characteristic moorland plants such as heather and bilberry to recover.
This marks the first step in a longer restoration programme that will help bring the site back into better condition for wildlife, including ground-nesting birds that rely on healthy moorland habitat.
The young woodland planted in February and March 2025 has also been assessed following the dry summer months.
We have now started replacement planting to fill any gaps where saplings were lost during the drought. Ensuring strong establishment in these early years will help the woodland develop into a healthy and resilient habitat in the future.
Our volunteer community has been fantastic, supporting us with essential work including ecological monitoring, habitat management and dry-stone walling. We’re also working with local universities making Ughill Farm a place where students can gain direct experience of ecology, wildlife and land management.
What we’re doing
Building a Flexible and Sustainable Farming System
To transform Ughill Farm we’re investing in renewable energy and technology to reduce the farm’s environmental impact whilst also creating and connecting habitat.
We secured a grant from Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL) to support the reinstatement of our solar powered water pump. This system allows us to collect water to supply out cattle with fresh water throughout the year without impacting the natural springs provision of water for the residents of Ughill. Being solar powered and having battery storage allows us to use the additional power generated to run electric fencing on site without the need to set up temporary battery systems.
With extensive support from our Volunteer Ranger team we had a successful grazing season and continued to improve the condition of our low input grasslands. This included light cattle grazing across the summer months across some of the farm. Along with the annual hay cut of suitable fields and the targeted removal of some reed, thistle and dock, the status-quo on the farm between grass meadow and scrub has been maintained.
Whilst keeping this baseline of activity we have also sent out teams to across the farm to survey the grasslands and seasonal breeding wading birds. These surveys will give us a clear picture of the state of the farm using two key wildlife grounds, allowing us to clearly track how our future projects improve and change the site.
We are running a novel trial in reverting a heavily modified belt of fields back to a combination of more natural acid grassland pasture and species rich hay meadow. We’ll be using a short-lived but vigorous grass to outcompete the docks and thistles and remnant agricultural crops, then hopefully as this dies back we can ‘innoculate’ the area with seeds from our wildflower meadows. This is a new technique and underpins our ethos for Ughill Farm. As we test this method of improving the quality of the grassland without the need for blanket chemical input, we will be monitoring the results and hope to be able to share our findings with other landowners.
The other key project we have begun to deliver on is the creation of more wetland areas, targeted at boosting suitable habitat for our wading bird populations. We have moved the farm access track to slightly higher ground, leaving behind a large scrape parallel to Wet Shaw Dike. This reduces soil erosion when accessing the farm in winter and the scrape will allow seasonal flooding and the build up of some standing water, to give the dike a larger riparian zone.
We have started planting approx 6,000 trees, primarily focused around the steep or wet ground around Wet Shaw Dike. This new woodland creation has been supported by South Yorkshire Woodland Partnership and will set aside 7ha of previously unused or unmanaged grassland for new woodland. These areas will grow to provide future resilience to climate change on the farm by providing shelter for livestock in both hot and cold conditions, often referred to as ‘green barns’, as well as providing invaluable habitat and carbon storage over their long lifetime.
As the wetland re-naturalises we will monitor progress and carry out small excavation works and plant wetland species to promote the natural processes. We also intend to remove a section of dry stone wall that currently creates a predator corridor (predators of ground nesting birds, such as stoats, do not like to travel across open ground. Instead they stick to cover such as walls only going out a short distance into the open to predate eggs and young).
The existing mature trees at Ughill are all around the same age and the Beech in particular offer only limited ecological interest, we are starting a new project to diversify the woodland structure. This will include:
Dying and deadwood supports a wide range of fungi and larval forms of hover fly and beetle. In addition the physical changes in the timber creates cracks and hollows favored by bats and summer breeding birds such as redstart and little owl. So, in time, our newly planted and existing mature trees will include the other key features of a dynamic and rich woodland ecosystem.
Note:
Furnace Hill is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) for its dwarf shrub heath and ground nesting birds. The site has not been grazed properly for many years and has become dominated with soft rush and there are currently no ground nesting birds.
In order to begin the process of restoring the SSSI, we plan to reduce the soft rush and grass which currently dominates this part of the farm. This will be done through grazing, mechanical soft r