JOHN CRAVEN

THE NATIONAL TRUST’S PLANS TO SAVE OUR WILDLIFE

f our countryside is to have a decent, viable future, it will need lots of tender loving care. Substantial long-term plans are essential if its people, economy and wildlife are to be protected. So let’s congratulate one organisation with enough clout to achieve such things for coming up with a comprehensive strategy for the next 10 years and more.

To many people, the National Trust means stately homes. But it is also one of Britain’s biggest landowners with 250,000 hectares (617,000 acres) of farms and 775 miles of coastline – and over the next decade, it will spend around £1 billion on conserving its houses, gardens and countryside. Not only that, it is pledging to work more closely with others to improve the quality of land and attract wildlife back to fields, woods and river banks.

IFOUNDERS’ DISMAY

Director general Helen Ghosh says the Trust has done a decent job in protecting our built heritage for the public. But she sounds this warning: “Where our founders would say we have failed as a nation is in protecting our countryside and wildlife: 60% of wildlife species are declining. The natural environment is in poor health, compromised by decades of unsuitable management and under pressure from climate change. That’s why the Trust will focus on playing its part in reversing this damage and creating the healthy and beautiful environment we need.”

So in its agenda are pledges to Volunteers for the National Trust plant heather seed on Mam Tor’s steep hillsides above Castleton, Peak District cut energy usage by 20% by 2020 and source 50% from renewables. As a key player in feeding the nation, the Trust intends to develop innovative ways of managing land on a large scale that are good for farmers, the economy and the environment.

Figuring largely will be tenant farmers such as Neil and Sally Grigg, who have restored hedgerows and added wildlife borders to their farm in Devon, and Gary Schofield in North Yorkshire who, as well as tending 800 Swaledale sheep, looks after 10 acres of wildflower meadows and 23 miles of dry stone walls.

SEEDS OF CHANGE

The Trust also aims to help communities safeguard and enhance their own green spaces. The ‘Tale of Two Cities’ project sees the Trust working with Kew Gardens and local groups to form wildflower landscapes along Princess Parkway, a gateway to Manchester, and around Everton Park in Liverpool. “This is a major opportunity to change the look and feel of two major cities,” says Sean Harkin, the Trust’s gardener-in-residence.

Over on Clent Hills, known as the green lungs of Birmingham, teenage boys who have been suspended from school learn countryside skills alongside NT rangers as part of a Green Academy scheme with the city’s youth service. It’s yet another example of the Trust moving far away from its stately home image. It’s good to see Europe’s biggest conservation charity, with 1.4 million members, doing a lot of thinking ‘outside the box’.

Helen Ghosh says the new strategy will benefit future generations and many of the changes may take 30 years or more. Maybe the latest set of politicians to take charge of our countryside should learn from the National Trust and draw up some credible long-term strategies themselves – and keep to them.

“Europe’s biggest conservation charity is doing a lot of thinking ‘outside the box’”

Watch John on Countryfile on Sunday evenings on BBC One.