Houghton Meadows hits its target!
£39,000 raised to buy and restore new land at nature reserve
We’ve had an overwhelming response to our appeal to protect a precious fragment of rare hay meadow at Houghton Meadows, near Huntingdon.
We asked for donations to raise £39,000 to buy and restore extra new land at Houghton Meadows at the end of May. By the middle of June we had already reached the target thanks to the overwhelming generosity of our members, donors and local people in the area!
The Trust already protects twenty acres of these incredibly-rare wildflower meadows as a nature reserve at Houghton. But a few months back we were given a once-in-a-lifetime chance to buy an adjacent field, allowing us to make the reserve bigger and better for wildlife. The landowner kindly gave us first refusal and the time to raise the funds - so we launched our appeal to raise enough to buy the land and transform it back to a flower-filled meadow alive with birdsong, bees and butterflies. The appeal will pay for the traditional management work needed to care for the whole site over the next few years: cutting the hay, fencing, grazing cattle and laying hedges.
Houghton Meadows is quite simply one of the best of the very few remaining hay meadows in Cambridgeshire – a staggering 97% have disappeared in a lifetime, so we really can’t afford to lose the scarce precious fragments that remain.
We asked for donations to raise £39,000 to buy and restore extra new land at Houghton Meadows at the end of May. By the middle of June we had already reached the target thanks to the overwhelming generosity of our members, donors and local people in the area! You can still donate if you wish. Your contribution will support the Trust’s work in the Ouse valley and across Huntingdonshire. We also intend to buy more land along this stretch of the Ouse Valley in the future so any further donations will benefit wildlife and people. You can donate via our Just Giving page here.
A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to this appeal.
You may also be interested in supporting our Totternhoe Quarry appeal which is close to reaching its target.
Photo by Zsussannah Bird