Island Life Magazine Ltd June/July 2010 | Page 116
country life
Island Life - June/July 2010
Photo:The Ride at Eaglehead
landscapes – biodiversity hotspots
and help us take forward our living
funds, the Hampshire Nature Fund
where wildlife can be protected and can
landscapes vision. But we actually own
and the Wight Wildlife Fund, where
spread out to neighbouring land once
or have on a long lease on just under
donations and legacies can be saved
conditions are favourable.
2,000 hectares – less than half of all
and then spent as soon as suitable
the land we manage.
wildlife sites become available.
(Contrast this with our inability to
‘buy’ seabed to create marine nature
Part of our vision for the future
Recently money from appeals and
reserves. It is one of the reasons why
is to actively buy more land under
legacies has enabled us to purchase
our marine wildlife has been decimated
threat in places where it can not only
new reserves such as Sandy Down near
over the last century. The new Marine
safeguard threatened species but also
Brockenhurst. We have identified a
Act, which The Wildlife Trusts lobbied
be a ‘building block’ for creating a
number of other valuable wildlife sites
long and hard for, allows for the
living landscape. The funds to buy and
in strategic locations that we would like
creation of ‘marine conservation
manage such land are increasingly
to buy should they become available.
zones’ which will protect vital breeding
hard to come by and, of course, the
The Hampshire Nature Fund will be
and nursery grounds for our most
price of land just keeps going up. It
used to buy and manage land only in
threatened marine life.)
only becomes possible thanks to the
the county of Hampshire. The Wight
generosity of people supporting our
Wildlife Fund will be used to buy and
around 5,000 hectares of land for
land purchase appeals or leaving us
manage land only on the Isle of Wight.
wildlife across the two counties. This is
gifts in their wills.
In both cases the funds will enable
The Wildlife Trust currently manages
made up of our 53 nature reserves and
Sometimes we cannot raise the money
us to act quickly to buy land when
other land that we manage or graze
quickly enough to complete the land
it becomes available and also to find
on behalf of others, most notably the
purchase and we have lost sites to
the matched funding needed (usually
Ministry of Defence. All of these sites
developers. So to try and avoid this we
10% or 20% of the cost) when we
are crucially important for biodiversity
have launched two new designated
successfully apply for lottery or landfill
116
Visit our new website - www.visitislandlife.com