Nottingham News

Use this page to add info about things that are about to happen or have just happened: events, projects, organisation changes, anything that'll be of interest to a wider audience. Let's keep them as short snippets with signposting to further info if necessary. You can add more details on an existing page about the topic, or start a new page about your item. Put new items at the top of the page and include a date reference. (As the page grows we can archive old items.)
2010
	Nottingham the least car-dependent city in England, closely followed by London and Brighton and Hove, 13 September bettertransport.org.uk, 13 September 2010 The worst cities for dependency on the car are Milton Keynes, Peterborough and Luton. The full ranking (from least car dependent to most): 1 Nottingham, 2 London, 3 Brighton and Hove, 4 Manchester, 5 Liverpool, 6 Newcastle, 7 Cambridge, 8 Birmingham, 9 Plymouth, 10 Southampton, 11 Sunderland, 12 Leicester, 13 Bristol, 14 Leeds, 14 Coventry, 16 Sheffield, 17 Luton, 18 Peterborough, 19 Milton Keynes topic
December 2008
*Nottingham City Council unanimously passes Peak oil motion, December 9 Transition towns wiki, December 9 topic, place
Spiny cheeked invader threatens future of native crayfish
 
First record of non-native species in East Midlands worries wetland wildlife experts
Last week, (17/10/05), wetland wildlife experts from across the region came face to face with a creature that poses a potentially lethal threat to the future of our native white clawed crayfish. 
Representatives from The Wildlife Trusts, Severn Trent Water and the Environment Agency gathered at the Attenborough Nature Reserve for a special ‘Water for Wildlife’ meeting and as part of the programme they saw live spiny cheek crayfish – a species which has recently been found to be breeding at the reserve. 
This is the first time the creature has been recorded in the East Midlands and wildlife experts are worried that this alien species could spell disaster for the native white clawed crayfish if it were to spread to other water bodies. It was thought that signal crayfish had become established at Attenborough as it has across much of the country but Wildlife Trust staff and volunteers were shocked to find that we had the spiny cheek variety. The species can cause ecological damage due its burrowing activities, and it can also damage populations of aquatic plants and invertebrates, which it eats in profusion. It is known to carry the organism that causes crayfish plague – spread by a parasitic fungus, Aphanomyces astaci. The plague is lethal to European crayfish, including our own white-clawed crayfish, Austropotamobius pallipes. 
The Wildlife Trust is urging fishermen to take extra precautions to ensure that they don’t contribute to the spread of the disease by disinfecting their equipment (including waders) or leaving it to dry out in the sun. 
Climate change and health seminar report
In July '05 the Health In Your Environment voluntary sector forum held a seminar about climate change and health with Rob Crowder from Nottinghamshire County Council and Jonathan Harris, Assistant Director of Public Health for the East Midlands. A short report of the event is now available on the publications page at the HIYE website. (20/9/05)
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