As well as being living, breathing communities with iconic heritage features, National Landscapes provide essential services worth at least £300 billion, which underpin the wider economy: natural water filtration, flood mitigation, cooling and places that benefit mental and physical wellbeing.
National Landscapes teams across England and Wales are working to get more of our natural spaces into better condition. One of the ways they do this is via the Defra funded Farming in Protected Landscapes and Welsh Government funded Ffermio Bro schemes. These two farming grant funds support farmers to take action for nature and people.
Together, Farming in Protected Landscapes and Ffermio Bro projects have brought around 400 Sites of Special Scientific Interest into favourable management, created over 400,000 metres of new hedgerow, planted over 300,000 trees, restored over 750 ponds, and engaged over 11,000 farmers.
Take a look back at some of the nature restoration projects we’ve featured as part of our Straeon Ffermio Bro and FiPL Friday threads.
The rewiggled river Kemp
Naturally clean water and flood reduction
Like many rivers across the UK, the river Kemp in Shropshire was straightened generations ago to create more productive farmland and move water away from the landscape as quickly as possible. This was a priority at the time, but straight rivers flow faster, disconnect from their floodplains and lose the natural habitats that fish, birds, mammals and insects rely on.
A Farming in Protected Landscapes project united two farmers in Walcot, the Shropshire Hills National Landscape team, Severn Rivers Trust, the Environment Agency, Natural England and Catchment Sensitive Farming to rewiggle the Kemp. Their work improved water quality, soil health and climate change resilience, and created habitat for fish, mammals, wading birds, amphibians and invertebrates.
Hedgerow restoration at Llangwyfan Farm
Improving habitat connectivity and reducing erosion
Llangwyfan Farm in Denbighshire received Ffermio Bro funding to carry out a large-scale programme restoring the farm’s ancient woodland, revitalising hedgerows and removing Himalayan Balsam along the Nant Fron Gelyn stream.
The woodland work removed diseased trees and thinned dominant species to allow native flora and fauna to thrive. 240 metres of hedgerow restoration created wildlife corridors linking the farm’s woodland areas. The next stage of the project will address issues with Himalayan Balsam, which causes riverbank erosion and crowds out other species. Because Llangwyfan Farm lies near the head of the watercourse, successful control here should have wide-ranging benefits further downstream.
Leaky dams slow the flow of water to reduce water pollution and mitigate flooding
Improving soil health and habitat diversity
During heavy rainfall, surface water at Deer Park Farm ran rapidly down the farm lane, through field gateways and across compacted ground, gathering speed and energy before eroding metalloid waste from the adjacent New Consuls mine site Scheduled Monument and contaminating the Luckett Stream.
A Farming in Protected Landscapes project converted existing ditches and flow-paths into swales (wide, shallow depressions), with flow disruptors to slow movement and store water in a slow-release system. New earth bunds and scrapes now hold water and capture sediment, and new earth banks with hedges intercept surface flows and improve filtration through their root structures.
By slowing and intercepting runoff, the work is keeping soil and nutrients in the fields where they can support grass, crops and livestock, while improving water filtration and promoting livestock health. The reduced flow of metalloid-laden sediment from the mine site is protecting a nationally important Scheduled Monument and the freshwater and saline environments downstream.
Every metre of nature recovery our teams and their local landowners and partner organisations undertake improves or joins up valuable habitat and contributes to the UK’s commitment to delivering the 30by30 target – an international effort to restore 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030, and signed up to by almost 200 countries.
Browse more of our nature restoration case studies.
