The National Lottery Heritage Fund today announced a £5million investment in a ground-breaking initiative to create a huge matrix of community-led rewilding projects – improving the lives of people from some of the most under-resourced areas across the UK and leaving a lasting natural legacy in honour of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The funding is part of The National Lottery’s £22million investment to mark the Jubilee.

Across the UK 44 local Wildlife Trusts will inspire and empower people from 190 communities to take action to bring nature to the heart of their community and Ipswich will benefit from its own project.  

Delivered by Suffolk Wildlife Trust, Nextdoor Nature will give people the skills, tools, and opportunity to take action for nature. This could include establishing wild habitats and green corridors in areas of economic and nature deprivation, rewilding school grounds, or naturalising highly urbanised or unused areas. The pandemic has demonstrated just how important access to a well-cared for natural environment is to communities across the UK.

Examples of communities that Suffolk Wildlife Trust will work alongside include: 

• Primary schools with very limited access to greenspace in their school grounds and in their immediate area 

• Communities, with a focus on young people, who live in socio-economically under-resourced areas of Ipswich. 

The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and research shows 85% of people in nature-deprived areas say more natural spaces would improve their quality of life. The majority also say that having access to local natural spaces is more important post-pandemic. Nextdoor Nature will enable people to make this happen and in doing so, take steps to tackle the nature and climate crisis whilst also addressing important health and wellbeing needs. 

Sara Holman, Head of Engagement at Suffolk Wildlife Trust, says,

“We know that people want to take action to improve their neighbourhoods but often it’s hard to know where to start. Nextdoor Nature will let communities set their own agenda about the environmental issues they want to tackle and we’ll be exploring different ways of bringing people together and giving them support, skills and confidence to take the next step.”

Thanks to the funding from the Heritage Fund, Suffolk Wildlife Trust will support individuals and groups to rewild communities who currently see their local area deprived of natural places to enjoy. Evidence shows that people are increasingly disconnected from nature, with profound consequences for health and it also means they are less likely to protect their natural heritage.

In the words of Sir David Attenborough, President Emeritus of The Wildlife Trusts, “No-one will protect what they don’t care about; and no-one will care about what they have never experienced.”  

Suffolk Wildlife Trust has experience in rewilding communities: 

• Networking Nature, funded by Heritage Lottery Fund, from 2011 – 2015 inspired and support community action for wildlife in every parish in Suffolk.

• Making Ipswich the Most Hedgehog Friendly Town in the UK, funded by Heritage Lottery Fund from 2016 –2018, enabled communities in Ipswich to make a difference for hedgehogs in the town and to inform hedgehog research and conservation at county and national level.  

• In addition, Suffolk Wildlife Trust Wild Learning Officer, Lucy Shepherd, has over four years’ experience of enabling communities in Ipswich to take action for wildlife. 

Anyone interested in finding out more can register here to receive information:

wildlifetrusts.org/nextdoor-nature