Land Trust Annual Review 2021: Charitable Delivery - Environment & Biodiversity

The value of the Land Trust’s green spaces to the natural environment continues to grow. With an increasing demand for new housing and grey infrastructure our work in this area is vital in protecting species that are vital to our planet’s ecosystem.

With people having a new found appreciation for parks and green spaces following Covid-19 our work in this area is becoming ever more important with the need to balance the demands of people and wildlife who call our sites home a priority.

This area of work continues to take on greater importance for the Land Trust and in and in 2021 the Trust launched our Biodiversity, Environment and Ecology strategy which sets out our ambition for the work we will do on our sites over the next five years.

Nature Space of the Year

There were joint winners of Nature Space of the Year at the Land Trust awards with Twywell Hills and Dales and Oliver Road Lagoons sharing the prize.

Twywell Hills and Dales contains a Site of Special Scientific Interest for the limestone grassland while another part is known as the best site in Northamptonshire for butterflies. Significant work to remove scrub has benefited both of those areas and Twywell is also home to a wide variety of bird species.

The site is incredibly popular with dog walkers and other visitors which puts pressure on the environment and biodiversity of Twywell and the Trust is planning on rolling out an innovative dog ambassador scheme in 2021-22 to ensure that people and wildlife can continue to thrive alongside each other.

Oliver Road Lagoons is one of only two sites in the UK where the distinguished jumping spider (Attulus distinguendus) can be found. A site wide survey in 2019 identified approximately 1,300 species of invertebrates, birds and reptiles and included 50 endangered spaces. Over 200 marsh helleborine orchids were found around the lagoon area which led to adjusted management to include additional thinning of some birch to encourage orchids to spread over a larger area.