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What next?
next? What
Catch up Read our 60th anniversary series online at suffolkwildlifetrust. org/60years
Holding the line is not enough, we need to protect the nature we have and bring back what we have lost.
As our 60th anniversary year draws to a close, we turn from our reflections on the changes to our county in that time and look to our plans for the next decade. The choices the Trust, and indeed society, makes now must be bold. The decade to 2030 must be the one in which we reimagine a wilder future for Suffolk and put nature on a path to recovery at the scale and pace that is needed.
We will be relentless in investing our energy into fighting nature's corner, but holding the line in the face of unrelenting pressure is simply not enough. Our collective efforts need to be on bringing nature back to our towns and countryside, so our county can once again bask in a joyful abundance of wildlife. This is the challenge Suffolk Wildlife Trust is determined to rise to – and the very foundation on which our county’s health and prosperity sits. As a member of Suffolk Wildlife Trust,
ABOVE: common frogs. BELOW: redshank.
what should you expect of us in the next decade? The simple answer is more. More, because that is what is needed of us, locally, nationally, indeed, globally to turn around the juggernaut of natureloss and climate change and focus society’s efforts on repairing and renewing respect for the natural world.
Undoubtedly, we will cherish the things that the Trust does brilliantly: our nature reserves, learning activities and our amazing network of volunteers. These are our DNA. ‘More’ means scalingup our activities to drive change at a landscape scale and societally, to shift the narrative decisively from protecting what nature we have, to bringing back what we have lost. ‘More’ means shifting the pace of change.
The urgency of our times means absolutely everything we do has to count, and ‘bringing nature back’ will be the yardstick against which we will measure every action, every decision, every request for your help, so that we are relentless in pursuit of our vision for a Wilder Suffolk. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to do nothing less.
30% for nature by 2030
For Suffolk Wildlife Trust, the next ten years will be about scale and pace, and we have set three goals to steer us. The first is for 30% of Suffolk’s land and seas
Wilder, more connected landscapes will be more resilient to climate change – and enable nature to play a vital role in addressing the impacts of a changing climate.
to be connected and well looked after for nature by 2030. This will allow our species and habitats to recover and restore the abundance of everyday nature – and be more able to adapt to a changing climate.
Whilst we have lost so much of our wildlife in Suffolk, so we can bring it back – piece by piece. A new hedge here, a restored pond there, wildlife gardens, field margins, rewilded areas, community spaces, businesses, new natural woodlands, restored rivers and wetlands. We will continue to cherish our nature reserves. In our quest for 30% they are the priceless jewels in the landscape. In our wilder future they will have a renewed sense of purpose as the ecological hotspots that can seed nature’s recovery to the surrounding landscape. We will continue to seize Our advisers will help Suffolk's farmers bring nature back.
Inspiring 1 in 4 people to actively help nature would put nature at the heart of daily life and decision-making.
opportunities to buy land to increase the size of our reserves, and also aim to establish two new landscape-scale reserves where nature can recover through rewilding.
Collective impact
30% is a big ambition. We are under no illusion of the scale of the challenge. It will need a collective effort by our county. There are so many ways to make Suffolk wilder again if enough of us care – and over our six decades our members, volunteers and supporters have shown the potency of locally led action.
Inspiring and harnessing this collective effort is the second of our big goals. We want to get one in four people on nature’s side, so that pro-nature choices become normal in society. This January, in an Our goal of 30% of land and sea in recovery for nature by 2030 needs to be a unifying ambition for the county. We are delighted that Suffolk County Council has adopted 30% as the biodiversity goal for its own land and activities, from farms to roadside verges, flood-management to community spaces.
Bringing back nature
What to expect of us
Over the past year, we have recruited a team of Farmland, River and Community Wildlife Advisers to bring about a step change in our impact beyond our nature reserves. They will champion landscape-scale approaches to nature’s recovery. We will share the work of the new team in a regular Wilder Landscapes section of your Wild Suffolk magazine. See p28 to discover the impact our River Wildlife Advisers are having.
One in four people acting for nature
Expect to hear us talking more about bio-abundance as well as biodiversity. As part of Team Wilder, we will work with others to support and enable everyone to play their part in bringing nature back where we live, work or go to school. This collective, community-led action will help to restore the abundance of everyday nature and bring wildlife to the fore in individual and community decision making.
New ways of volunteering
We want to make the world of nature a welcoming and inclusive place, to enable more people to be part of the Trust and do their bit for wildlife.
Whether hand-delivering our magazine, data crunching, making the tea at a fundraising event, sharing wildlife knowledge with others, access audits, wildlife surveys or beach cleans, we’d like there to be an opportunity to help for everyone.
STANDING TOGETHER
Last autumn, The Wildlife Trusts welcomed the passing of an Environment Act, which will help the UK Government make significant progress in tackling the climate and nature crises.
Collective action across all Wildlife Trusts for more than three years has been instrumental, not only in securing the legislation, but also ensuring that it was strengthened. Whilst some areas fell short of our ambitions, the inclusion of a legally-binding 2030 species abundance target has the potential to boost efforts to reverse the decline in wildlife. Planning applications must provide Biodiversity Net Gain, encouraging developers to put nature at the heart of their work, whilst Local Nature Recovery Strategies will create the framework for a national system of interconnected sites for nature. Plans for the Office for Environmental Protection have been improved by ministers, but it still fails to be independent. We will keep pushing, to put nature at the heart of decision making – local and national.
independent survey commissioned by Suffolk Wildlife Trust, 91% of people told us they were interested in nature, and almost half of these went further, saying they were ‘very interested’. Our challenge is to turn this interest into action.
We will put more emphasis on supporting community-led activities and developing training networks, so we create ripples of activity which build their own momentum and reach way beyond the staff and volunteers that set them off.
Our third goal is all about those ripples. If we are to drive positive change for nature at scale and pace, then we need to empower our staff and volunteers to lead that change. That means investing in our current team, but also reimagining volunteering, so we find new ways to enable more people, and crucially a new generation of nature activists, to take the baton from us and make it theirs.
In the same way we lost so much of our wildlife we can bring it back piece by piece
Find out more
suffolkwildlifetrust.org/team-wilder
Stag beetles, swifts & hedgehogs are among the many species that would benefit from making our towns wilder.
Chris Luxton is CEO for Suffolk Wildlife Trust.
