The bank holiday and half term week coupled with some of the hottest days of the year meant that the Lake District experienced a large influx of visitors. That brought a welcome boost in trade to cafes, coffee shops, restaurants and retail outlets, who are keen to make up on lost business due to the pandemic. But there have been reported problems with littering in the southern lakes area. Ruth Kirk, the landscape engagement officer at Friends of the Lake District, said with more people holidaying in, and visiting, the Lake District, due to Covid restrictions, there had been a huge rise in littering and ‘fly camping’, which was putting enormous pressure on local communities and organisations which look after the area.
Call for volunteers to pull up Himalayan balsalm in Rydal
Volunteers are needed to help remove Himalayan balsalm across Rydal.
For the third year running, conservation charity Friends of the Lake District, in partnership with South Cumbria Rivers Trust, is calling for people to help with a mass removal of the invasive species.
Ruth Kirk, Friends of the Lake District’s landscape engagement officer said: “Over the past two years, a willing army of volunteers have removed hundreds of thousands of these non-native plants.
“The difference is obvious in the areas that we’ve hit hard. But Himalayan balsam is a pesky and persistent blighter; it creeps back again.