Help boost Peak District wildlife 

A week-long campaign to create vital ‘wildlife corridors’ in the Peak District launches today (22^nd April).

The Peak District National Park Foundation is taking part in the Big Give’s Green Match Fund – live from today to 29th April – in which every donation is doubled for the benefit of nature. 

Money raised in the Foundation’s Landscape Trees of the Peak District project will be invested in tree planting in the White Peak, creating vital habitats for struggling species.

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The White Peak, known for its dramatic limestone dales and rolling farmland, faces a hidden crisis. Its wild woodlands are severely fragmented, surrounded by a plateau with just 2% tree cover. This isolation is threatening local wildlife, which depends on connected habitats to move, feed, and breed.

Rhodri Thomas, Land & Nature Team Manager at the Peak District National Park Authority, says: “there’s been ongoing habitat loss in the Peak District, and that’s resulted in declines of a lot of species and wildlife over the years. We want to mitigate that and support farmers to deliver wildlife conservation alongside food production.”

The Landscape Trees of the Peak District project is fighting this habitat loss by planting individual trees and small copses in grazed farmland – the kinds of trees that fall outside of any existing national or regional funding schemes. 

The new trees will begin to link isolated ravine woodlands, creating vital wildlife corridors that support biodiversity and combat climate change. Support and guidance are also being offered to farmers to help integrate these trees into the working landscape.

Robert Thornhill, a Great Longstone dairy farmer, is a spokesman for nature conservation work in White Peak farmland. He has been planting trees for the last 20 years and says trees “provide shade and shelter for the livestock, and for any crops underneath. They will draw up nutrients lower down and cycle those by leaf deposition. They will add in terms of wildlife, and I think work in synergy with farming.” He says, “I think there’s a massive opportunity to increase ecology there without impacting negatively on productive farming at all.”

Foundation director Roisin Joyce says: “We’re excited to be partnering with the Big Give in this Green Match Fund campaign which means that, for example, a £10donation instantly becomes£20, allowing us to plant and protecteven more trees. This is a rare opportunity to make twice the differenceto one of our vital projects.”

Donate today via The Big Give: https://tinyurl.com/2dmpmjft