On 26 May 2022, we released 48 tansy beetles at our ecology site at the Haxby Road Sports Centre. This is the culmination of a five-year project by the Grounds team and the Environment team, with the help local of volunteers, to create a ‘Tansy trail’, which has involved planting around 500 tansy plants. We would like to send a special thanks to the Tansy Beetle Action Group, River Foss Society and Community Action for Nature for their support of this project.

The event received extensive media attention, with the story featured in the York Press, BBC Radio York, and BBC Look North. The beetles were released on a well-established tansy clump, and it is hoped that they will spread across the trail. Our site will serve as an ark habitat, so that a population of tansy beetles is maintained in case populations along the Ouse disappear.

Once widespread across the UK, tansy beetles are now a nationally rare species, due to a loss of habitat and food which mostly consists of tansy. The beetles are also dependant on tansy to as a sit to lay their eggs, and as they rarely fly or walk further than 200 metres, the loss of a tansy clump can be devastating if there are no more clumps nearby. They are listed as an endangered species globally by the IUCN and in the UK, now remain only along a stretch of the Ouse in the York area, along with small isolated populations in the East Anglian Fens.