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Cotswolds Nature Recovery Forum

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The Forum is an informal group which has been working to deliver nature conservation at a landscape scale across the Cotswolds National Landscape (AONB) since May 2010. It currently has over 70 members representing 35 organisations including local authorities, community organisations, landowners, the private sector and conservation organisations.

Purpose

The Forum exists to achieve and sustain the recovery of nature across the Cotswolds.

Objectives

In pursuit of this purpose, the Forum;

    • Sets out priorities, outcomes and actions for nature recovery across the Cotswolds within a Cotswolds Nature Recovery Plan.
    • Supports and encourages collaborative working to make nature recovery across the Cotswolds a reality.
      • Identifying and coordinating existing activity.
      • Encouraging working across boundaries be they land ownership, political or sectorial.
      • Identifying and strategically filling gaps in activity through project development.
    • Informs strategies and ways of resourcing action to best deliver nature recovery across the Cotswolds
    • Communicates the following key messages.

Key Messages

    • Wildlife needs to recover from past losses and adapt to climate change through utilising large sites and spreading across a permeable landscapes. Achieving this requires a coherent and robust nature recovery network.
    • A coherent and robust nature recovery network is an essential element of a fully functioning ecosystem and as such is important in maintaining ecosystem services. These ecosystem services are critically important to the wellbeing and economy of people living in and around the Cotswolds.
    • The fragmented nature of habitats in the Cotswolds means that they are not currently fit for purpose in terms of enabling our wildlife to adapt to climate change and in maintaining ecosystem services.
    • The way to create a coherent and robust nature recovery network is to make habitats better, bigger, more and joined as outlined in ‘Making Space for Nature (2010)’.
    • Achieving and sustaining a coherent and robust nature recovery network will require new mechanisms, partnerships and ways of working with new audiences.

Projects

Current Work

Previous Work

    • Identification and promotion of two Nature Improvement Areas.
    • The Forum was instrumental in the Cotswolds securing a local project through the national Save our Magnificent Meadows programme which ran from 2014 to 2017. The success of this project led to the current Glorious Cotswold Grasslands project which is growing the work of supporting land owners and managers in restoring wildflower grasslands and in engaging people in wildflower grassland conservation.
    • Development and publication of a Cotswolds Nature Recovery Plan. This is a deep dive into the species and habitats of the Cotswolds and what we can all do to help them flourish and spread across the Cotswolds.

Joining the Forum and further information

The only requirement for membership is that the organisation shares the Forum’s purpose and objectives.
Please read the Forum’s Terms of Reference before asking to join.

For membership and all other enquiries please e-mail Simon Smith at simon.smith@cotswolds-nl.org.uk

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