Plans to create
The South Downs National Park has launched a major initiative to tackle the biodiversity crisis and create a new wildliferich habitat the size of 21,000 football pictures.
The aim is to ‘re-nature’ the area and the campaign is looking to raise £100m over the next 10 years to create an extra 13,000 hectares of habitat where plants and animals can thrive.
These ambitious plans would mean an area over a third again bigger than Brighton and Hove (87.5km2) and over six times the size of the City of Westminster in London (21.45km2), managed for nature.
A beautiful and emotive film, “The Night We Renatured”, has been launched to start the initiative, telling the story of a young girl who dreams of nature rekindling in our countryside, villages, towns and cities as people work together to create a home for wildlife. The film is set to be shown this month on cinema screens across the region.
The South Downs, Britain’s newest National Park and the third biggest in England, currently has 25 per cent of the land managed for nature, such as nature reserves, woods, heaths, ponds and flower-rich road verges. The additional 13,000 hectares would bring this to 33 per cent of land managed for nature – going beyond current Un-backed conservation targets of “30 per cent by 2030” (30 for 30).
But the National Park also wants to go one step further – ensuring that the remaining 67 per cent is nature-friendly by 2030.
#Renature is being spearheaded by the South Downs National Park Authority and the South Downs National Park Trust, the official independent charity of the National Park, working with a range of partners.
It comes as national statistics show nature is in crisis everywhere. The latest national State of Nature report showed revealed that 41 per cent of UK species studied have declined, and some 133 species assessed have already been lost from British shores since 1500.
Around a quarter of the UK’S mammals could also be at risk of disappearing altogether. Climate change, pollution and habitat loss are among the causing factors.
Ecologist Andrew Lee said: “The biodiversity crisis is real and it’s happening before our
eyes, but the good news is it’s not too late to turn the tide of wildlife loss. Nature can thrive anywhere given the right support and we can all work together to make a real difference.
“Located in the busiest part of the UK in the South East, the South Downs National Park has a crucial role to play to lead nature recovery and be the hub of an interconnected ‘nature