Magdalen Farm to benefit from £150,000 government grant

The Magdalen Environmental Trust was awarded the grant from the government's Green Recovery Challenge Fund.

The funds provided will help transform parts of Magdalen Farm, just outside of Broadwindsor, into conservation areas - creating an 'oasis' for local wildlife. It will also go towards providing 1,000 schoolchildren and others the opportunity to stay on site and create jobs and employment placements for young people who have struggled with opportunities as a result of the pandemic.

£40 million was dished out in total from the Green Recovery Challenge Fund, created to boost green jobs and nature recovery.

Giles Aspinall, CEO of Magdalen Environmental Trust, said: “We live in a time of ecosystem collapse, the scale of which we can barely comprehend.

"I remember a thousand insects splattered on the windscreen when I was a child. My parents remember huge flocks of farmland birds, now vanishingly rare. Their parents were alive when a single shoal of fish off our coast might cover 15 square miles.

"My children will tell tales of hedgehogs, swallows and skylarks to their own kids, to whom these animals may be as remote as the dodo.

"This decline can be, and must be reversed, and so the Magdalen Environmental Trust has committed to creating an oasis of prime new habitat in the heart of the Axe Valley, and to sharing it with thousands of schoolchildren and other guests each year.”

The Green Recovery Challenge Fund is a key part of the government's 10 point plan to kick-start nature recovery and tackle climate change. The fund aims to protect, restore and improve the natural environment for the benefit of both communities and the economy.

Connecting people with nature is another priority theme - by increasing access to nature and greenspaces, projects will support both physical and mental wellbeing.

The fund is being delivered by The National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with Natural England, the Environment Agency and Forestry Commission.