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Cambs & Peterborough Local Nature Recovery Strategy reflections

Cambourne

Martin Baker is Cambridgeshire Conservation Manager for the Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs and Northants
Trumpington Meadows

Local Nature Recovery Strategies have come about through the Environment Act (2021). The Wildlife Trusts fought very hard for a national nature recovery network based on local knowledge to be included in this act and it was a major win for nature conservation.

To implement the requirements of the Environment Act, around 50 areas have been identified covering the whole of England with each to prepare their own Local Nature Recovery Strategy. 

The Local Nature Recovery Strategy for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough will be formally adopted on 24th December 2025. The Wildlife Trust welcomes the adoption of the strategy, having worked hard behind the scenes to ensure that the Local Habitat Map aligns with the extensive nature network maps that we and other partners had previously produced over the past 20 years. The Wildlife Trusts were rightly proud when we successfully lobbied for the inclusion of Local Nature Recovery Strategies in the 2021 Environment Act. However, translating a good idea into a meaningful nature conservation strategy and priorities has taken a lot of effort from many people.

Great Fen - Woodwalton Fen

In Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, our top nature conservation priority is to secure the future of our most important nature sites by ensuring they can become BETTER and BIGGER and by focussing on those local landscape areas with concentrations of nature sites. In the longer-term, we can move onto creating connections and a more wildlife-friendly landscape between these priority areas. However, in the short-term we need to focus limited funding on those places that can make the most difference to nature, such as the Wildlife Trusts Living Landscapes approach. 

We have ensured that a higher proportion of land has been identified for potential new habitats around our top nature sites and in those local landscape areas identified by local partners as priorities for nature recovery, such as the Great Fen, Wicken Fen, Ouse Washes, John Clare Countryside, West Cambridgeshire Hundreds and Cambridge Nature Network. We now have a LNRS Local Habitat Map (see Local Nature Recovery Strategy) that better reflects the long-standing agreed nature recovery priorities across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, with a greater focus on enhancing and expanding habitats and sites in locations where the most gains can be made.

People walking through Waresley and Gransden Woods by Rebecca Neal

People walking through Waresley and Gransden Woods by Rebecca Neal

Nature recovery requires vision and taking action at a larger landscape scale, rather than focusing habitat by habitat. We want to create places with a rich variety of local landscapes, made up of different habitat types with larger populations of more species. Resources are limited and, in the short term at least, we need to focus on those places where we can have the greatest impact. Our LNRS is not perfect. However, taking the right action in the right places will make a meaningful difference to nature recovery. The key question now is, will we collectively, through national and local government (with public support), provide time and funding to deliver the nature recovery ambitions of our LNRS? 

Martin Baker is Cambridgeshire Conservation Manager for the Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs and Northants

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