Wildlife along the River Aire

Bridge over the River Aire, Leeds

The River Aire runs through a wildlife park at Shipley, once the worst area for industrial pollution along the River. In recent years efforts by local environmental groups have greatly improved the water quality resulting in increased numbers of kingfishers, ducks and other river wildlife. Improved conditions are also evident from the lighter sand deposits replacing decades of heavy grey silting.

Kirkstall Valley Nature Reserve is boundaried by the River Aire and the Leeds Liverpool Canal. The main plateau of the reserve is home to meadows of beautiful wild flowers in the Spring and early Summer, as well as several species of tree including birch, cherry, alder and hawthorn.

It is a also a nesting site for many bird varieties such as the kingfisher, sedge warbler and reed bunting, and currently for sixteen species of butterfly.

7. 5 acres of the reserve make up an island in the River Aire. The sands are an ideal habitat for oak trees and the clearings are happily strewn with awesome bluebells in the Spring time. The lack of pedestrian access to the island secures it as a refuge for the Roe Deer, herons and several species of waterfowl.

Carefully positioned reed beds feed on the polluted water and naturally cleanse the water environment in the river, and also for the man-made ponds to where the purified water is to be hydraulically pumped to give life to various insects, frogs, beetles, snails and pondlife such as water lilies.

Warblers, tits, thrushes and songbirds live in the woodlands there too.