We have been concerned for some time that important wildlife habitat on private land can be lost to future agricultural intensification or development. Imagine spending your lifetime creating a wildlife haven and not being able to protect that habitat for all the species that call it home if you had to sell the land or when you pass away. All those species you had loved and nurtured would lose their home.
We worked with Agri Advisor Solicitors to develop a guideline Trust to protect land for wildlife forever. We have created The Nature Recovery Trust and will put our land into Trust after our days. As part of this, all our grazing animals must be looked after as conservation grazers and family members and live their full and complete lives on the farm until the end of their days.
If you own a garden, a field, a smallholding or a large farm that you want to protect for wildlife forever, hopefully you can use the templates (and guidance documents) below as a starting point. You will need to name your trustees and ensure this document is referenced in you Will. You will also need to develop management guidelines to ensure that your trustees know how you want your land looked after in the future. We suggest employing a good ecological consultant to develop this for you. We contracted Matt Sutton, from Wyndrush Wild to carry out this work for us.
We hope that people will find this information useful while we work to change legislation by raising a concern about the functioning of environmental law for the Interim Environmental Protection Assessor for Wales.
Protecting Land for Nature with a Trust
Draft legal clause to protect land for nature, forever
This project was funded by a Welsh Government Local Places for Nature project delivered by WCVA in collaboration with the Pembrokeshire Nature Partnership (Pembrokeshire County Council), the National Trust and the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.
Part 2 of this project was supported by the Nature Networks Programme. It was delivered by the Heritage Fund, on behalf of the Welsh Government. The fund aims to strengthen the resilience of Wales’ network of protected land and marine sites, supporting a green recovery for nature and communities. Project partners are: Dr Beynon’s Bug Farm, the Pembrokeshire Nature Partnership, Rob Davies (Llanunwas/HabitatInfo), the National Trust, the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority and the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.