The Bradford Pennine Gateway National Nature Reserve

Great news from Brontë country! As told by The Guardian:

The sweeping landscapes of the Pennines inspired the Brontë sisters, and now those lands are being protected as one of England’s biggest nature reserves.

A huge new national nature reserve, to be called the Bradford Pennine Gateway, is being announced by the government on Tuesday. It will give Bradford, one of Britain’s largest and most nature-deprived cities, easier and more protected access to green space

The Brontë family lived in nearby Haworth, and the surrounding hills and moors inspired the scenery for novels including Wuthering Heights.

The 1,274-hectare (3,148-acre) reserve links eight nature sites within the Bradford and South Pennines region and other areas including Penistone Hill country park near Haworth.

The reserve will also protect rare wildlife such as adders, curlew and golden plover. Approximately 90% of the area comprises UK priority habitats including peat bogs, heathlands and wetlands. (Helena Horton)

Also in The Times:

The King is to support the creation of a nature reserve on the moorland that was the setting for the Brontë sisters’ tales of tempestuous romance.

The Bradford Pennine Gateway National Nature Reserve will encompass 1,272 hectares of heathland and bog around the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire.

It is to be the seventh in a series of nature reserves created to celebrate Charles’s coronation in 2023.

The reserve will protect the habitats of short-eared owls, adders and curlews by connecting eight areas rich in biodiversity, including Ilkley Moor, Harden Moor and Penistone Hill Country Park.

The creation of the reserve will mean that these eight areas will now be subject to one nature restoration plan, with peat bogs restored to deal with flooding in the area and fire breaks created to stop wildfires tearing across the landscape.

The site was chosen in the hope of increasing access to nature in Bradford, whose residents are in the bottom fifth of the country in terms of access to green spaces. The city is one of only eight areas outside London in the bottom fifth.

Natural England, the government’s environmental watchdog, will be inviting students from local schools to help collect data about wildlife across the reserve. (Ben Cooke)

Also in The Independent, Grough, and quite a few more.

Ilkley Gazette features Brontë at Ilkley Playhouse.

Brontë opened in the Wildman Studio on Monday, May 12.

In a collision of dreams, imaginings and memories, playwright Polly Teale shows how three great writers emerged - three sisters, three landmarks of the Yorkshire moors, entwined by ties of family, isolation and a passion for the written word.

She challenges the theatre to fill its indoor space with the vast, windswept outdoors of the moors and the sea; with the vast internal storms of human emotions played out within the confines of a family home, a family whose name we know so well – Brontë.

Witness how their story inspired their writing, as we take you from today, back to the 1840s, to the parsonage in Haworth, where the daily reality of tending to people – the living and the dead – occupies their father, Patrick. Tending to Patrick occupies his three daughters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne. And then there was Branwell, their brother, charismatic and careless, passionate and profligate.

The play was originally created with Shared Experience Theatre Company in 2005 – written and directed by the company’s co-artistic-director, Polly Teale. In 2010 it was revised and revived, this time directed by her co-director – Nancy Meckler. The play runs until Saturday, May 17. (Caroline Mutton)

For Women First recommends 'The Top 5 ‘Wuthering Heights’ Adaptations That Still Hold Up'.