Nature reserve threatened by drought order

NICHOLAS SCHOON

Environment Correspondent

Drought-hit Yorkshire Water wants to take millions of extra gallons a day from the river running through a wetland which the Government yesterday proposed as an outstanding European nature site.

Conservationists say that if the Government grants the company an emergency drought order to take extra water from the Derwent, south-east of York, it could have a disastrous impact on the valley's ecology and large bird population.

There will be a public hearing next Tuesday into Yorkshire Water's application to raise the limit on what it can extract at two pumping stations in the Lower Derwent Valley from 305,000 tonnes a day to 360,000, an 18 per cent increase.

If granted, it would last six months - enabling the company to build up stocks until the summer. But Yorkshire Water is also applying to the National Rivers Authority to raise the limit for a three-year period.

Yesterday, the Environment Secretary, John Gummer, said the valley should be one of a further 75 Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) under the European Union's habitats directive. These are the wildlife sites which get the highest level of legal protection from development and damage under British law. Last year, the Government sent a list of 136 sites to the European Commission for inclusion in the directive.

The list proposed yesterday also includes Dungeness in Kent, Orford Ness in Suffolk, Epping Forest, north-east of London, Salisbury Plain, Flamborough Head in Yorkshire, Lundy, the Scilly Isles, the Avon Gorge woodlands in Bristol, Dartmoor, and the large area of sand dunes at Braunton Burrows, Devon. Scottish sites include Rannoch Moor and the flow country of the far north,

In the Derwent Valley, thousands of bird overwinter including 23,000 wildfowl and more than 15,000 waders, golden plover, teal, wigeon, pochard, shoveler and whimbrel. In the summer, several other birds breed in the damp meadows, including lapwing, snipe, curlew and redshank. There are also breeding otters.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds strongly opposes the application. ''There is a great danger of a major impact on the wetland,' the conservation officer, Kevin Bayes, said. ''Removing the water is a little like switching off the life support system.''