Sussex Wildlife Trust (SWT), one of 47 local Wildlife Trusts across the country, is celebrating a milestone in landscape-scale conservation: more than 100 schemes across the UK are helping people and wildlife combat the impacts of climate change. Together these ‘Living Landscape’ schemes cover more than one million hectares.

‘Living Landscapes’ involves enlarging, improving and joining-up areas of land on a vast scale to help wildlife adapt to climate change but also for the benefit of people.

Dr Tony Whitbread, chief executive of SWT says: “In Sussex we have always safeguarded our wildlife havens but now we must think beyond these boundaries and create ‘A Living Landscape’ with landowners, farmers and local communities. These larger scale schemes not only help wildlife they alleviate floods, control pollution and help us cope with extremes of temperature. What is good for wildlife is good for people too.”

The West Weald Landscape Project is one of SWT’s landscape schemes, covering nearly 60,000 acres at the western end of the Low Weald, north of the town of Petworth in West Sussex. At the heart of this diverse ancient landscape of woodland, glades and wetlands is the Trust’s nature reserve at Ebernoe Common.

SWT has been able to buy some of the farmland and parcels of woodland surrounding Ebernoe Common, known as Butcherlands. It is now creating areas of future wood pasture, including a mixture of woods, pastures, meadows, hedges and rews (thin strips of woodland linking larger blocks). Such an interconnected landscape is essential to allow creatures, such as dormice and butterflies, to move from one section to another and provide an ideal habitat for the many important species of bat found in the area. The Trust’s acquisition has virtually doubled the area of Ebernoe Common.

Dr Tony Whitbread says: “Bats and dormice are good indicators of a well-connected landscape for wildlife. A great deal of our wildlife needs a landscape that is well connected so they can move about, colonising and re-colonising areas in response to a changing natural world. Working with others and continuing to expand and create more natural landscapes is the future of conservation.”

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