ENVIRONMENT
LANGDYKE COUNTRYSIDE TRUST
By Richard Astle, Chair, Langdyke Countryside Trust
Langdyke Cou Lockdown has reinforced our love of nature, but it hasn’t lessened the pressures on our local wildlife We are lucky in Tribland to have so much and so varied wildlife in and around our villages. But we must never forget how much nature, even here, is in steep decline. Nightingales have gone from Bainton Heath, lapwings nest in one or two places, not everywhere as they once did; turtle doves have done well again this year at Maxey, but have vanished from the rest of our countryside. Wild-flower meadows are few and very far between and ash trees are dying across our landscape. This is why the John Clare Countryside project - spearheaded by the Langdyke Countryside Trust
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- is so important as it aims to create a nature recovery area across our area, allowing space for nature to prosper and expand across the countryside. And these ideas have considerable support. Peterborough City Council unanimously approved a motion in July to “support Natural Cambridgeshire's aim of doubling the area of land managed for nature across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough by 2050 and in particular supports the John Clare Countryside project, which aims to create, launch and deliver an ambitious and accessible nature
recovery area across the landscape areas to the west of Peterborough” We have been taking these plans forward during lockdown, including the launch by Zoom of our initiative for every parish to create its own Nature Recovery Plan. Already we have twelve of our local parishes signed up to the idea and starting work on their plans. Working with our partners at Natural England, the Wildlife Trust and PECT, Langdyke has produced a toolkit full of advice on how to develop a nature recovery plan – this will be on our website soon. The first step is to create a map
