Wildlife habitat manufacturers, Wildlife World, are providing wildlife nesting boxes to eight ‘Buzzing Cities’ across the UK in a bid to increase wildlife in urban environments.

The Urban Buzz project is creating 200 hectares of rich and vibrant habitats, engaging 80,000 people with their wildlife hotspots. Wildlife World’s nest boxes were specified by project coordinators Buglife as one of the chosen habitats for pollinating insects to improve habitat connectivity.

Michelle Bales from the Urban Buzz Cardiff project commented: “Urban Buzz is an exciting project using innovative techniques to create eight ‘Buzzing Cities’ in England and Wales for our declining pollinators. By transforming unused areas of land, we are creating 100 sites in each city equating to more than 200 hectares of rich and vibrant habitat, which equates to more than 33 Wembley Stadiums.”

She continued, “Creating vibrant habitat requires the provision of food such as wildflowers and shelter. Buglife worked with Wildlife World to develop the Farmland Bee box as the perfect off-the-shelf effective solitary bee home that is robust enough for public spaces, this is why the Urban Buzz project has been putting these bee homes into our new urban pollinator spaces. In Cardiff we will be adding 100 of the Wildlife World bee homes to parks and other open spaces and look forward to seeing them in use in the years ahead.”

Wildlife World managing director Norman Sellers commented; “Our mission at Wildlife World is always to provide innovative and sustainable products that will benefit wildlife. The Urban Buzz project is a great opportunity for our nest box habitat to make a contribution in this way. Pollinators are of great importance to our environment and this project is a way of encouraging wildlife into cities by creating a corridor for wildlife”.

Urban Buzz is already underway in Cardiff, Birmingham, York and Plymouth, with four more cities to start this year. The project includes tree planting, formal bed and native meadows, as well as nesting wall habitats, bee banks and bee hotels. Bug Life’s aim is to help pollinators become more resilient to changes in cities, such as climate change, construction and pollution by installing attractive wildlife habitats.