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Talacre is an important place for the wild animals that live around us
As well as a space for people to enjoy in this busy part of London, Talacre also provides homes, refuge and food for animals with its various habitats, meadows, long grass, trees, shrubs, hedgerows and soft ground.
The Friends aim to increase Talacre’s capacity to support wildlife, and balance this with the needs of local people for free, accessible, open space to enjoy.
There are thousands if not millions of animals and plants that rely on Talacre
Birds, bats, frogs, ants, toads, foxes, rats, mice, squirrels, flies, bees, bugs, beetles, worms, slugs, woodlice...
Wildflowers, nettles, roses, fruit trees, mushrooms, forest trees, fungus, grasses, shrubs, vines...
We may not all want all of these living in our homes and gardens! But Talacre is their home and here they are not a problem. Indeed, it is fun, interesting and reassuring to visit the park and be amongst these plants, animals and fungi and know that this world of nature exits alongside ours.
Talacre gives us local access to nature
Talacre is an accessible park and well used by the community in a variety of ways for relaxation, games, picnics, dog walking and so on. It also helps people who live nearby to experience and connect with nature locally in a familiar place. Many people do not have any outdoor space of their own and would otherwise need to travel to visit green spaces and get close to nature. The benefits to people of accessible green space near home cannot be overstated.
The charity Mind explains that spending time in green space or bringing nature into your everyday life can benefit both your mental and physical wellbeing. For example, doing things like growing food or flowers, exercising outdoors or being around animals can have lots of positive effects. It can:
- improve your mood -
- reduce feelings of stress or anger -
- help you take time out and feel more relaxed -
- improve your physical health -
- improve your confidence and self-esteem -
- help you be more active -
- help you meet and get to know new people -
- connect you to your local community -
- reduce loneliness -
- help you feel more connected to nature -
A web across the city for animals to move around
Talacre is part of the web of green spaces used by animals that live within and pass through London. In this, it joins school gardens, city farms, housing estate gardens, nature reserves, window boxes, tree pits, private gardens, green roofs/walls, street trees, allotments, railway verges, canals, parks, rivers, undeveloped land, and other habitats that provide living space for animals to move around our built environment.
Without this web of habitats spread across the city, many animals would not be able to survive in the built environment or continue to live alongside us.
Habitats are constantly under threat, not just from being built upon directly, but also from new buildings and infrastructure forming barriers that animals cannot cross. Designers, planners and architects are responsible for making sure their projects do not break the fragile networks of urban habitats that animals need to survive.
The Friends aim to improve Talacre’s connections with other green spaces and to work with local groups and Camden to make this happen.
The Camden Nature Corridor
The Camden Nature Corridor
The Camden Nature Corridor is a plan to improve and extend nature-rich green spaces in Camden and to bring their benefits to the doorsteps of residents in nature-poor areas. It will do this by improving five of Camden’s Sites of Interest for Nature Conservation (SINCs) and linking them through new “green infrastructure” in planned housing development. This will create a corridor of accessible woodland, hedgerow and meadow, extending the rich biodiversity of Hampstead Heath into residential areas to the south. More nature in urban neighbourhoods will improve our well-being and quality of life and, at the same time, make our local biodiversity richer and more resilient to urban growth and climate change. Working across Camden’s pressing demands for both better housing and nature restoration, this is a unique opportunity to deliver on both. More information is available on our site here.
Talacre is on a B-Line. What are B-Lines?
B-Lines are an imaginative and beautiful solution to the problem of the loss of flowers and pollinators. The B-Lines are a series of ‘insect pathways’ running through our countryside and towns, along which Buglife are restoring and creating a series of wildflower-rich habitat stepping stones. They link existing wildlife areas together, creating a network, like a railway, that will weave across the UK landscape. This will provide large areas of brand new habitat benefiting bees and butterflies - but also a host of other wildlife.
You can see Talacre on the maps below. For more information visit www.buglife.org.uk
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