It is widely known that the UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world. We have lost at least half of our wildlife since the industrial revolution, and 1 in 6 of our species is at risk of extinction. Our destruction of habitats, sterilisation of landscapes, and pollution of waterways has driven the collapse of our ecosystems and all that they support.

The decrease in species abundance is often accepted as the new norm by much of the population, and there are several social phenomena that help explain how we have reached this position. The most widely known is Shifting Baseline Syndrome, a gradual change in the accepted norms for the condition of the natural environment, leading to lower expected diversity and abundance over time. Then there is the Illusory Truth Effect, where what is familiar is judged to be true, and the Extinction of Experience, where a depleted environment makes each generation less engaged with the natural world, resulting in less knowledge being passed down to successive generations, leading to widespread apathy. All of this has caused us to have a very warped sense of what our wider landscape and the species that frequent it should look like.

For many years we have managed land as nature reserves – relatively small, isolated pockets, where we protect a particular habitat and suite of species. While this has largely worked well in saving specific areas, and hugely important to act as rich hubs for when we have a wilder landscape, it’s forced our perceptions of which species truly belong in which habitat to falter, with many species clinging on to the edges of where they can survive. There are now countless examples of species not adhering to the guidebooks – purple emperor butterflies on sallows at the Knepp Estate, white-tailed eagles nesting low down in willows in the Oostvaardersplassen, and several ‘heathland’ species breeding in ex-arable fields at our very own Wild Woodbury.

There is now a large push across the UK to move towards extensive, landscape scale conservation, where we can restore natural processes such as water restoration and mixed grazing, to establish mosaic landscapes proven to deliver high levels of species diversity and abundance.

Increasing abundance in both isolated populations and meta-populations helps build resilience across a landscape. Resilience is needed to prevent population loss, and ultimately extinction, by better enabling species to withstand both anthropogenically driven  and stochastic events such as climate change, pollution, disease, and habitat loss.

By enacting a combination of traditional and more extensive land management techniques across the 18 sites included in the Species Survival Fund, including water restoration, rewilding, downland restoration, and introducing mixed grazing, we will be creating bigger areas for nature, that are in better condition for species diversity and abundance, and that are more joined up. Combining this with supporting neighbouring farmers and landowners, and by engaging local communities, we can drive change, and push towards thriving nature recovery networks across Dorset.

As part of the Species Survival Fund, our project team will be bringing you monthly blogs to update you on the work we have been doing, and how we are changing our landscapes to increase and support species abundance.

This project is funded by the Government's Species Survival Fund. The fund was developed by Defra and its Arm's-Length Bodies. It is being delivered by The National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with Natural England and the Environment Agency.