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A visionary partnership project working
to promote integrated management of a viable and enhanced landscape
in the West Weald for people and nature.
The
West Weald Landscape Project (WWLP) covers a large area of 240
square kilometres (nearly 60,000 acres) at the western end of
the Low Weald, north of the town of Petworth. A broad partnership
of organisations including environmental bodies and local authorities
are involved in the project.
The WWLP works at a landscape scale to conserve
and enhance the special natural environment of this area, by creating
more space for nature and natural processes and hence benefiting
people too through the provision of ‘ecosystem services’
such as flood alleviation and carbon dioxide fixation from the
atmosphere.
In addition to a focus on the most important core forest areas
and their rare species of woodland wildlife, we aim to establish
better connections between sites to enable species to both thrive
within them and be able to move across a more natural landscape,
giving them a better chance of adapting to the impacts of climate
change in particular.
The involvement of farmers and landowners is crucial to realising
less intensive land use and reinstating traditional forms of management
in the wider countryside, such as coppicing of woodland, which
we are supporting by advising on the targeting of funding through
the Government's Environmental Stewardship and England Woodland
Grant Scheme.
We work with people furthermore to foster greater public understanding,
enjoyment, access to and inspiration from a more natural landscape,
and are keen to encourage increased provision of local 'sustainable'
natural goods and services such as wood fuel and organic meat.
The West Weald is an incredible natural
resource - Let's make the effort to
better understand, enhance and enjoy it!
Discover
The West Weald
The
State of the West Weald's Natural Environment (2006)
Click to download Summary (pdf 325KB)
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