Yorkshire Wildlife Trust warns chemical spill could threaten hundreds of thousands of birds along the Yorkshire Coast.Credit: BBC
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00:00It's phenomenally important. Between the protected areas that you've got in the North Sea, the cliffs at Flamborough and then you've got the Humber Estuary and Spurn Point, which we manage at Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.
00:11The Humber Estuary is one of the most designated protected spaces that we have in many ways, but it's also a very busy shipping lane.
00:18And it's important for a number of reasons, one of which is the fact that at this time of year, you've got a whole range of wildfowl and waders, which have come in from Scandinavia, from Russia, from Northern Europe.
00:29They come to this place because they want to feed on the mudflats there.
00:34Obviously, a concern here is if pollutants are getting into the system, is that could affect the food in those mudflat systems.
00:42Also, the birds that are feeding on them. And it's we are talking about hundreds of thousands of birds that come here.
00:48And it emphasizes really how one of the problems we have in this country is we don't have enough space for nature.
00:53So you do end up with everything congregating in very small spaces.
00:57And when that is impacted by something like this, those birds, they don't have anywhere else to go.