Save Ilkley Tarn

Help us prevent the council from enabling the replacement of ducks at Ilkley tarn with frogs and stickleback.

We've been lucky enough to have ducks and ducklings at Ilkley Tarn for 40 years. We enjoy watching their antics, feeding the ducklings in spring, and watching them skating the ice in winter.

These changes are being marketed as bringing “life” back to the Tarn but they’re simply replacing ducks with stickleback and frogs. The species currently supported by the Tarn are flourishing. Fish and frogs are a dreadful alternative to ducks. Frogs are shy and (over time) form a green blob in a sheltered corner. Fish are all-but invisible because of the reflectivity of the water. Neither are a species people can interact with.

As an enclosed water body full of wild animals, surely we should expect it to be dirty? It’s not even knee-deep in most places which means people can’t bathe or swim in it. Sometimes it’s necessary to challenge organizational group-think. We don't object to improved water quality but does it matter if the Tarn can’t support frogs and stickleback?

We'd like to see the following changes:

• Increase quantity of water flowing through the Tarn to improve its water quality
• Change the newly erected signs to encourage responsible feeding (eg. avoid feeding bread)
• Stop introduction of fish and frogs and find a more suitable location which meets their welfare needs

Justification for these plans has changed over the years. Recently it became bird-flu but previously it was water quality. The new Tarn signs say a larger group is more at-risk but the Tarn hosts a duck population which doesn’t migrate (they over-winter at the Tarn). We know from COVID that isolation is the best defense against any flu. The real risk is not the size of the flock, which doesn’t seem overly large for the Tarn, but from mixing with the thousand-strong flocks in the wild and returning with bird-flu. These changes increase the risk of bird-flu being introduced to the Wharfe. An isolated non-migratory population has the best defence available. 

Please help us and together we can make a difference.

Save Our Tarn    Contact the author of the petition