DUMPING rubbish in Worcester’s green spaces isn’t just unsightly, it can also have an impact on local wildlife.

Worcester City Council, our partners in the Take Pride campaign to keep the area’s streets and parks clean, has responsibility for about 240 acres of wildlife reserves.

It also looks after its formal parks, kick-about spaces and Worcester Woods Country Park.

These include wildflower meadows, ancient woodland, riverside floodplains and small ponds, which are tended to by the council’s ranger team.

Warwick Neale, head of the city council’s park ranger team, says much of their time is occupied with collecting litter and dealing with incidents of fly-tipping, rather than general care and maintenance work.

He said: “During the last calendar year, they collected hundreds of rubbish bags of litter, cleared away extensive fly-tipping and picked up hundreds of newspapers which had been dumped rather than delivered. In all, this took the teams more than 400 hours to do.

“Rubbish doesn’t just look bad, smell or take years to degrade, it kills wildlife.

“In fact, thousands of animals are discovered across Britain dead or suffering because of household waste each year.”

Mr Neale said that dumped green waste could become a haven for rats or see garden varieties of plants and trees out-compete natural flora.

However, this can be solved by recycling household and garden rubbish via street-side collections or visiting the local tip.

Wendy Carter, communications manager at Worcestershire Wildlife Trust, said: “Our wildlife already faces major challenges from development, agricultural intensification, habitat fragmentation and climate change.

“Litter and rubbish that is left by man makes life even harder for it.”

The trust warns that everything from plastic bags to polystyrene cups and tin cans to glass jars can pose a threat to inquisitive wildlife.

However it also said that the problems can be easily avoided by people making sure they put litter in rubbish bins and allocated recycling bins.

The Take Pride campaign runs until Friday, July 27.