A new online game has been launched that aims to increase awareness of the effects of climate change in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Players have to run a Snakes and Ladders-type gauntlet as they travel round the board, climbing up some of National Park’s famous limestone pavements or sliding downing waterfalls – and answering climate change-related questions if they land on certain squares.

The game was the brainchild of Meghann (correct) Hull, the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s acting Interpretation Officer, and the Authority’s Web Officer Stuart Willis.

Meghann said: “Climate change is a serious issue for the National Park and we wanted to create a fun way of making people aware that they can all help to minimise its impact when they visit.

“The game is aimed primarily at young people – but mums and dads can have a go too – in fact, they may be surprised at some of the answers.”

The game, located online at www.yorkshiredales.org.uk/climatechangegame, was devised with the help of Leeds-based Sense Internet.

Stuart said: “A key target for the game is teachers. We worked closely with Sense to enable the game to be a valuable teaching resource and help raise awareness among teachers of the broader educational resources supplied by the YDNPA. This in turn should increase interest in the Authority as a relevant source of educational material and increase school and family visits to the Dales.”

The YDNPA aims to achieve ‘carbon neutral’ status by 2012 and, in 2007, it publicly confirmed its commitment to helping counter the effects of climate change by signing up to a national initiative.

The Authority joined more than 200 other organisations in supporting the Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change, a voluntary pledge to address the issues of climate change.

At the time, Authority Chairman Carl Lis said: “The impact of climate change is the most critical issue facing the Authority. It will affect every aspect of what we do as an organisation. But, more importantly, it will also affect the environment and the communities right across the 680 square miles of uplands that make up the National Park.

“That land – and the people that manage it – will have a vital role in terms of the way it can potentially be used to help mitigate climate change and its effects, for example, creating new woodlands to absorb carbon and provide wood fuel, or restoring degraded moorland to lock in carbon and help reduce flooding downstream.”