This year marks the 130th anniversary of the founding of the UK’s preservation society, called the National Trust. To mark the occasion they are setting a very ambitious goal for the future. The trust has always supported the country’s heritage with projects like saving important old buildings or funding purchases for museums. But its massive new goal is to restore over 250,000 hectares of natural spaces. That’s equivalent to one-and-a-half-times the size of Greater London, and ten times the amount of land restored by the trust over the past decade. The charity’s director, Hilary McGrady says, “For 130 years, the National Trust has responded to crises and challenges. Today, nature is declining before our eyes and threatening homes and habitats on a colossal scale.” The trust will look to private landowners and communities to carry out much of the restoration work. 

Rather than merely restoring individual patches of land, they want to connect wider landscapes to create a varied mosaic of rich and resilient nature. A recent example of this was the acquisition of the Lunt Farm in Liverpool. 90,000 native trees will be planted on this degraded farm. This will connect it to the Mersey Forest network, allowing native wildlife species to move more freely across the land. Another example was in the Shropshire Hills, where a project was carried out on several degraded meadows to restore them to flowering glory, and provide a connective habitat for the local species.