Project aiming to protect wildlife corridors

Cabinet Member for Climate Action and Nature Recovery

Now that we are entering the mowing season, there are some changes to the grass cutting regime in north Horsham town to tell you about. There are good reasons for the adjustments and much to find interesting. I should start by saying that there is nowhere in the country more proactive in addressing documented national nature decline than Horsham district. That is why the mowing adjustment is happening here.

Our aim is the continued good order of public space and road verges, alongside speedy recovery of our wildlife and the setting of new sustainability standards.

There is synchronicity in the activities of the many different nature recovery groups and individuals in our district. Maybe it is the zeitgeist or that Horsham district families have custodianship of the countryside in their DNA. Perhaps more newly arrived residents have chosen to live here because the natural world speaks loudly to them too. For whatever reason, there is a strong commitment to nature here.

In my efforts as local councillor, I meet with residents about many issues and I have noticed that our conversations frequently veer to nature recovery. I recently met someone about a planning issue who, every February, musters volunteers to alert traffic as thousands of toads cross the road in Jackrells Lane.

As a result, fewer toads are lost on their way to spawn. (Toads are particular about returning each year to ancestral breeding grounds irrespective that a road has been built in their path.) With a similar mindset, the limited change to our mowing will enable wildlife to move more freely which should help it to survive.

Essentially, Horsham District Council has joined forces with West Sussex County Council’s Greenprint initiative, a pioneering project that aims to protect wildlife corridors as part of a wider sustainability strategy. Whereas grass has routinely been cut regularly and the cuttings left in situ, now, selected areas of grass will be allowed to grow throughout the summer, thereby providing a corridor for pollinators and wildlife, before being cut and collected in early Autumn. The sustainability element is that the cuttings will be tested for repurposing into biofuels and road materials to help decarbonise our highways.

North Horsham has been chosen for the project due to nature recovery efforts of residents, volunteer groups and Horsham District Council. Local group, Horsham Green Spaces, mapped pollinator routes through town and the Council helped with these efforts by establishing The Wildways Project.

I would like to reassure anyone with concerns that no green space amenity will be compromised as a result of this project. The corridors are limited, mapped and specific, and will be monitored and managed. In effect, they are tributaries of the countryside that surrounds the town; veins of life carrying pollinators, invertebrates and other wildlife from one place to another in order to ensure their survival at a time of unprecedented vulnerability.

Should we be successful in this project, we will know it for certain as cause and effect will be well documented. We will establish best practice so that the good order of public space is not sacrificed but, rather, is enhanced. Monitoring, record keeping and analyses are all part and parcel of the work, as they should be, and, in time, we hope to demonstrate the positive possibilities to others.

Maps of the Wildways routes through the north of town, along with further detail regarding this innovative venture, can be found on Horsham District Council’s website and Greenprint information is available online from West Sussex County Council.

We trust that being part of this pioneering project will ably support the nature recovery efforts being made by so many of our residents.