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• Looking after reserves
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• Protecting wildlife beyond reserves

1. Green infrastructure

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• Involving people in conservation
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Protecting wildlife beyond reserves

The Trust works beyond its own nature reserve boundaries to protect threatened wildlife and special wildlife places from damage or neglect.

We concentrate a lot of our efforts on the most important places for wildlife in our three counties – these have all been identified and designated as County Wildlife Sites. We do this in the following ways:

Advising landowners

We encourage and advise farmers, landowners, local authorities, and businesses on how they can care for and improve the wildlife on their sites. We hope in future to be able to expand this work when resources allow.

Defending threatened sites

We screen all planning applications in our three counties. We object to any that will damage sites of County Wildlife Site standard until the wildlife interest is safeguarded and/or adequate mitigation for any damage is agreed. If despite our best efforts a damaging development goes ahead we will negotiate with the developer and the planning authority to minimise the damage and to win compensatory habitats for wildlife.

Influencing regional, county and local plans

We comment on Regional Planning Guidance, County Structure Plans or Development Frameworks, and Local Plans, to ensure that a strong framework exists to protect County Wildlife Sites and other areas of conservation value.

Promoting ‘green infrastructure’

Our three counties face unprecedented scales and rates of development. Around 270,000 new houses are planned in the next 15 years. Our routine planning work seeks to deflect this development away from County Wildlife Sites. But we also encourage planners and developers to work to positively benefit wildlife wherever possible, through sensitive design, appropriate habitat creation, and sound management of green spaces within development. More about ‘green infrastructure’

If we succeed in our aims then in future there will be more green spaces, better designed and managed for wildlife. New settlements will result in net gains for biodiversity, and will provide new communities with local access to wildlife. Fewer County Wildlife Sites will be damaged by development, and more will be in favourable condition and sustainably managed.