The Wildlife Trust of South & West Wales today announced plans to buy Skokholm lighthouse and the surrounding land, to fill in the last piece of the jigsaw for their ownership of this unique island.
Trinity House, the current owners of the Skokholm lighthouse, will continue to exhibit a light at the lighthouse, but technological advances mean the light will require very little maintenance. This enables the lighthouse estate, built in 1916 to guide mariners past the treacherous coastline in to Milford Haven, to be sold to the benefit of this environmentally important island.
The land around the lighthouse includes the densest colony of Manx shearwaters across the islands of Skokholm and Skomer, the two Pembrokeshire islands managed as nature reserves by the Wildlife Trust of South & West Wales. The last full island count showed this land to contain 2870 burrows. Since these two islands contain roughly 50% of the world population, it is possible that this is the densest colony in the world! The area also contains the densest population of storm petrels on the two islands, as well as chough and rare lichens.
The Wildlife Trust’s Chair Professor Lynda Warren said ‘Trinity House and the Wildlife Trust of South & West Wales have been excellent neighbours for many years and the importance to conservation of the land surrounding the lighthouse meant that we were naturally interested in buying this and the lighthouse itself’.
As well as protecting the wildlife of the island, the Wildlife Trust hopes to refurbish the lighthouse to provide visitor accommodation, which will add to the current facilities offered at the island farmhouse complex. This will enable more visitors to experience this unique, remote and wild island and help with our conservation work there, as well as offering visitors the chance to stay in a traditional lighthouse and to learn about its heritage.
The Wildlife Trust will continue to work in close partnership with Trinity House.
The Wildlife Trust of South & West Wales is launching an appeal to raise the necessary funds for the purchase and renovation of the lighthouse, to complete the renovations of the island’s historic buildings and to maintain the surrounding land which will secure the future of this internationally important nature reserve.
For further information about the appeal, visit the Wildlife Trust website www.welshwildlife.org.
