Herefordshire Wildlife Trust awarded grant of £249,500

Herefordshire Wildlife Trust has been awarded a grant from the Government’s £40 million second round of the Green Recovery Challenge Fund, a multi-million-pound boost for green jobs and nature recovery.

The grant awarded to Herefordshire Wildlife Trust will support a number of projects which all contribute to nature’s recovery across the county and will run until 2023.

The Trust will extend its surveying and monitoring of wildlife and wildlife habitats and landscapes across the county to help us better understand how and where to make improvements for wildlife. 

One key area of work will be to map and support and improve places designated as ‘Local Wildlife Sites’, wildlife-rich habitats, usually in private ownership. Working with project partners ‘Herefordshire Meadows’ new sites will be surveyed and supported through management plans across the county Landowners may often be unaware of these special places and we want to help them to manage their sites for wildlife.

The funding also allows the Trust to continue and extend our work with landowners, supporting work along the Yazor Brook in Hereford and funding a Farm Advisor who can support farmers to make their farms more wildlife friendly and sustainable, helping them to access grants and expertise.

On its own sites, the Trust will use the grant to create and restore wildlife habitats and improve public access to two key sites within the Lugg Valley Wetlands: Bodenham Lake and Oak Tree Wetland. At Oak Tree Wetland, purchased by Herefordshire Wildlife Trust in 2020 thanks to a public appeal, the site will be restored to a wildlife wetland with ponds, reedbed and floodplain meadows and bird hides and access paths installed. At Bodenham Lake, where a habitat creation project has just been completed, the nature reserve will be made more accessible with new paths and bird hide.

Herefordshire Wildlife Trust’s Conservation Senior Manager Andrew Nixon said: “This support from the Green Recovery Challenge Fund means that we can take a huge step towards a Nature Recovery Network for Herefordshire, gathering and coordinating data on our wildlife and landscapes then restoring and connecting all our special wildlife sites so that nature can thrive across the county. Working with our project partners Herefordshire Meadows we will be restoring wildflower meadows, river valley wetlands and woodlands as well as urban spaces.”