Local Nature Recovery

For many years we've known that nature reserves alone are not enough for wildlife's recovery. Too often we've seen wildlife forced into fewer and smaller pockets of wild space, surrounded on all sides by urban development or intensive agriculture. Instead we need to create connected spaces across our landscape - in our towns and cities, on farmland, and in natural places - to give wildlife a chance to recover and adapt to pressures like climate change.

A Nature Recovery Network is a joined-up system of places important for wild plants and animals, on land and at sea. It allows plants, animals, seeds, nutrients and water to move from place to place and enables the natural world to adapt to change. It provides plants and animals with places to live, feed and breed. It creates the corridors and areas of habitat they need to move in response to climate change. It connects wild places and it brings wildlife into our lives. It can only do this effectively if, like our road network, it is treated as a joined-up whole.

The Network would include nature reserves and Local Wildlife Sites, and parts of National Parks. It would also contain peat bogs, heaths, meadows and cliffs; road verges, parks, gardens, hedges and woods; and rivers, streams, ponds and lakes.

Our vision for a Network

We need to create a Nature Recovery Network that extends into every part of our towns and countryside, bringing wildlife and the benefits of a healthy natural world into every part of life. Letting flowers bloom along road verges, installing green roofs across skylines, planting more street trees to give people shady walks in the summer, encouraging whole communities to garden for wild plants and animals. A network that brings wildlife into every neighbourhood would also provide fairer access to nature for people. Studies have shown the benefits of living close to nature, but many people are deprived of these benefits.