SCHOOLCHILDREN are helping to recreate a heather moorland destroyed 60 years ago by opencast mining.
Children from Kibblesworth and Marley Hill primary schools have been planting heather on Burdon Moor, which is close to the Tanfield Railway.
Burdon Moor is one of the last remaining areas of lowland heather in Gateshead. Once an attractive patchwork of heather moor and pasture, it was reduced to a few scattered fragments by opencast mining in the 1940s.
Last year, the area was bought by Gateshead council with the help of the Countryside Agency.
Councillor Pitch Wilson, chairman of the Great North Forest Members' Steering Group and Jo Turnbull, board member of Northumbrian Water Environmental Trust, unveiled an information board to inaugurate the restoration.
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