A community effort: rewilding England’s countryside at Strawberry Hill
This week’s story was inspired by a workshop I attended a couple of weeks ago, led by Natural England and the Wildlife Trust.
It’s a story of local biodiversity recovery and community effort.
I hope it inspires you to get curious about your own local positive stories.
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When the Romans left, a quarter of the English territory used to be covered by woodlands.
Progressively, woodlands have been replaced by arable land, railways and other transport infrastructure, and cities…
Fast forward to the last few decades, and you’ll see how the English countryside has been taken over by agricultural land as far as the eye can see…the scrubby woodland upon which Nightingales depend to breed has drastically reduced, causing this elusive bird population, famous for its melodious song, to shrink by 42% just in the last 30 years.
However, at Strawberry Hill, a wildlife haven in the middle of acres and acres of agricultural land in Bedfordshire, the Nightingales are singing again, alongside many other birds, like willow warblers, whitethroats, garden warblers, and turtle doves among rare wildflowers, butterflies and 11 different species of bats.
In the late 1980s, an enlightened farmer agreed to take his farmland out of production, incentivised by the Government with a subsidy to try and avoid food surpluses across the EU and to promote positive environmental management.
While other land has in the meantime gone back to be used as arable, Strawberry Hill, a piece of land five times the size of the average natural reserve, was left to rewild, untouched, becoming the largest area of scrub and young woodland in central England.
In 2023, the Wildlife Trust purchased half of Strawberry Hill and just a few weeks ago, it raised £1.5M from thousands of public, philanthropic and charity donors to buy the other half.
The site and its rich wildlife are now closely monitored and protected by the charity volunteers and open to visitors to enjoy.
The Wildlife Trust is only one of the many amazing charities that focus their efforts on rewilding England. In fact, Natural England, the government’s adviser for the natural environment, has plans to create a number of natural corridors and rewilded areas across the country to allow species to roam across them undisturbed, introduce new standards around biodiversity net gain and protect existing habitats.
Take a look at Strawberry Hill from above by clicking on the picture below:
This article was originally written for the Green Gorilla weekly newsletter. If you liked it, subscribe to receive more articles like this and learn how to communicate sustainability better, how to be more productive without selling your soul to the work devil, and how to make an impact in the world. Here is the link: https://newsletter.thegreengorilla.co.uk/