Endangered species get new habitat

THE National Trust has outlined plans to create tens of thousands of acres of new natural habitat on its land to help save dwindling species such as cuckoos and water voles.

Important and threatened habitats such as lowland meadows, woodlands, hedgerows and field margins will be created or restored across a tenth of the landowner’s 250,000 hectares (620,000 acres).

The plans also aim to ensure half of all Trust farmland is nature-friendly by 2025.

A major State Of Nature study last year found more than half (56%) of studied land and freshwater species in the UK were in decline.

Peter Nixon, the Trust’s director of land, landscape and nature, said: “Nature has been squeezed out to the margins for far too long. We want to help bring it back to the heart of our countryside.

“Birds such as the lapwing, cuckoo, and curlew are part of the fabric of our rural heritage. But they’ve disappeared from many parts of the countryside.

“We want to see them return to the fields, woods and meadows again, along with other wildlife which was once common and is now rare.”

The National Trust is working across Wales, England and Northern Ireland to protect species on its land, from large blue butterflies to mountain hares, smooth snakes to bluebells.

Many of the Trust’s 1,500 tenant farms are already run in a way that benefits wildlife, and it insisted farming was vital to its approach to countryside management.

The Trust said it would work in partnership with its farmers to deliver wildlife-rich, productive landscapes – which will require support for sustainable farming.

Mr Nixon said the future of farming and the environment were “inextricably linked” and the Trust wanted both to thrive.