Volunteers have been ensuring the survival of rare wetland plants and animals. JOHN CAVE of the Yorkshire Derwent Catchment partnership reports

The morning is unseasonably warm and humid, the country in the very last throes of late summer.

A spade sinks into the soil, creating an opening less than half a foot wide.

A tall, green, slender plant is lowered into place, its umbrella-shaped flowerhead crowning the top of this otherwise-unassuming plant.

A firm boot presses against the dark soil and the first greater water parsnip plant for hundreds of years is returned to internationally important wetland reserve.

A group of volunteers from several different groups, including Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Yorkshire Water and Natural England, have arrived at Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Wheldrake Ings nature reserve near York with the intention of saving a scarce wetland species.

Greater water parsnip is native to the UK and formerly a widespread, dominant species in wetland areas of England and Northern Ireland.

However, populations have declined to 50 per cent of their former range over the past 40 years as a result of habitat loss and changes in wetland management.

Greater water parsnip is now only present in a small number of isolated pockets of wetlands in England, and classified as ‘endangered’ on the vascular plant red list for England, meaning it is vulnerable to extinction.

In response to this marked decline, several organisations have attempted to reintroduce the plant to areas where it is locally extinct with variable success; in many cases populations fail to establish, becoming locally extinct again within one to three years.

It’s a fact the volunteers are acutely aware of, and great care is taken with each plant.

Individual plants have been meticulously cared for from seed. Last autumn, seeds were selected for propagation by hand and nurtured into mature plants by dedicated volunteers at Yorkshire Water’s Tophill Low nature reserve in east Yorkshire.

Favourable sites for transplanting at Wheldrake Ings Wetland reserve have been chosen carefully to aid success.

It’s not just a single plant which is important here – it’s the whole wetland ecosystem. Our wetlands have declined 90 per cent in the last century and are the focus of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Wilder Wetland campaign.

Healthy wetlands are incredibly important for wildlife, providing a refuge for species which have been pushed to the brink, including iconic species such as bitterns, marsh harriers and water voles.

They are also incredibly important in our fight against climate change, being the most effective carbon sinks on our planet and offering protection against flooding by naturally storing huge quantities of water and releasing it slowly.

A few weeks earlier, the volunteers had gathered to transplant another important plant: the tansy.

Unlike greater water parsnip, tansy plants are widely abundant across much of the UK. Their attention-seeking bright yellow flowers often lead them to be confused with ragwort, another common plant in our countryside.

However, tansy plants are critical to the survival of the highly endangered tansy beetle. Nicknamed the ‘Jewel of York’, the small beetle - a quarter of the size of a 1p coin - is a spectacular sight, with an unmistakeable green iridescent body.

Until 2014 the last remaining UK population of tansy beetles was thought to be on the River Ouse in York, until a small population was discovered in the Cambridgeshire fens, another pocket of nationally important wetland habitat.

Small populations are vulnerable, particularly to unpredictable weather events associated with climate change. Summer flooding of the beetle population could be catastrophic and may lead to local extinction.

As a result, under the guidance of the Tansy Beetle Action Group, volunteers are creating new tansy beetle habitat within the Derwent catchment.

It is hoped that one day the catchment could support an expanded tansy beetle population, safeguarding this endangered species for future generations.

The conservation of these rare species has been made possible by funding from Yorkshire Water’s biodiversity enhancement fund and through collaboration between a number of organisations and their dedicated volunteer groups, including Natural England, Yorkshire Water and Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.