Thank you for supporting a Wilder Future for our Grasslands
From May 2026 - July 2026, the Wilder Future Fund focussed on our work to support the creation, restoration and management of meadows and grasslands, and our work engaging people with these vital and amazing habitats.
Thanks to vital donations, we can do more to protect and restore our grassland habitats, through work such as:
- Running vital species surveys, including the annual orchid count at Fulbourn Fen, successfully recording 2,999 orchids this year!
- Supporting our staff and volunteers as they work to protect declining native species, such as the pasqueflower, which now thrives at Knocking Hoe Nature Reserve.
- Managing our grassland reserves with the right equipment, skills and time.
By supporting a Wilder Future for Grasslands you have helped ensure our meadows remain vibrant, wildlife-rich and diverse for now and in the future.
Why Meadows & Grasslands?
By late springtime, our grasslands and meadows are springing into life with their vast array of grasses and wildflowers: quaking grass, greater knapweed, squinancy wort, salad burnet, and numerous orchid species.
Sadly, our meadows and grasslands are becoming an increasingly rare habitat. Over 97% of species-rich grasslands in England have disappeared since the 1930s due to agricultural intensification and development. Once common plants now have a threatened status of Critically Endangered, Endangered, or Vulnerable, but our nature reserves provide safe havens for them to continue to thrive.
Let’s create a Wilder Future for our Wildflower Meadows.
We Need Your Help To Protect A Disappearing Habitat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QMvEF3MYBk)
Credit: Holly Wilkinson
We've all experienced the effects of climate change firsthand. Recent unprecedented heatwaves have left lawns, fields, community spaces and meadows parched and brown.
More than 97% of England's species-rich grasslands have disappeared since the 1930s, largely due to agricultural intensification and development. We can't afford to lose what remains.
Grasslands and meadows are home to an extraordinary variety of wildlife. Rare fungi such as waxcaps and pinkgills, pollinators including butterflies and bumblebees, and farmland birds like meadow pipits and skylarks all depend on these habitats to survive.
We protect and care for a number of precious grassland reserves, where our dedicated staff and volunteers work year-round to restore habitats, support wildlife, and improve the wider countryside.
But this work takes resources. From maintaining fencing and grazing livestock to using specialist equipment for habitat management, every aspect of protecting these landscapes comes at a cost.
Donations toward the Wilder Future Fund can help us to cover these costs, to restore and protect England's precious grasslands for wildlife and future generations.
Pasqueflowers at Knocking Hoe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chuQYn8whb8)
Credit: Holly Wilkinson
Pasqueflowers are one of the most beautiful, and most threatened, wildflowers in our region. Our Wilder Future Fund is raising the money needed to bring special grassland species like this back from the brink. Graham Bellamy, a volunteer warden on our Bedfordshire chalk reserves, has spent many years protecting pasqueflowers. Here he is speaking at Knocking Hoe, a Natural England owned site which the Wildlife Trust helps to manage.
We are also working with Plantlife to try to bring pasqueflowers back to nearby Pegsdon Hills where historically they were much more abundant. Their name derives from Paschal, meaning Easter or Passover as they emerge in April each year, almost exclusively on healthy chalk and limestone grasslands. They are steeped in folklore, once believed to grow where defeated Romans and Vikings lay, but they have suffered serious declines.
Annual Orchid Count at Fulbourn Fen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr1gmeBD8Xc)
Credit: Nik Shelton
The number of orchids at this reserve has increased tenfold thanks to careful management and protection of the site. The orchid count by the team of trusty volunteers at Fulbourn Fen in Cambridgeshire is an annual event and shows the huge benefits meadows have for nature.
Wilder Future Fund
How Your Donation Can Help
Why is a Hay Cut Needed?
Nene Wetlands Ranger, Pete Bray, explains why cutting the grass is so important to keep our wildflower meadows healthy.
Youth Rangers of the Fens conducting an orchid count.
Get involved in counting orchids.
Our Youth Rangers play an important role in carrying out orchid surveys at many of our wonderful nature reserves. Across May there are a number of opportunities to join them in this vital monitoring work.
Banking on Butterflies
The Banking on Butterflies project aim was to improve our understanding of how to support butterflies in the face of climate change using mounds of earth called ‘butterfly banks’. Find out what we’ve learnt since 2021.
Why people like you are donating to this cause
This donation is in memory of my good friend Alastair Robertson.£51 + £12.75 Gift Aid
The Trust is creating a community where everyone's contribution, however small, whether financial or voluntary, is essential and valued.£11 +£2.75 Gift Aid
More Wilder Future Fund Donations
You can be sure your money will go towards helping nature recover and achieve the vision of more nature everywhere.
Donations from the appeal will be classified as unrestricted and used by the Wildlife Trust BCN to achieve its charitable purposes, progressing work to restore wildlife, recover landscapes and engage communities.
A Wilder Future For Young People
We’re now turning our attention to engaging young people with nature.
Discover more Wilder Future Fund Themes:
