Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust and Severn Trent are celebrating after efforts to restore priority habitats including reedbed and marsh at the charity’s Idle Valley Nature Reserve - and to recreate suitable habitat for protected species, including nightjar, at other locations across the county - were recognised at the prestigious Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM) awards earlier this month.

The Wildlife Trust and Severn Trent have been working together for over two decades, but since 2020 have been committed to a range of ambitious projects designed to restore and recreate key habitats on nature reserves and to support farmers to enhance their land for wildlife, whilst reducing water pollution and protecting precious soils.

Speaking on behalf of Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, Head of Nature Recovery (North) Janice Bradley said: “As we face up to the combined nature and climate crisis, we need to deliver bold and ambitious programmes to speed up nature’s recovery across the county. To do this we need the support of partners who share our ambitions. We are delighted that the work we have delivered with Severn Trent’s backing to restore and recreate key habitats and to support the recovery of iconic species at Idle Valley Nature Reserve and 3 other Sites of Special Scientific Interest in the County has been recognised at the prestigious CIEEM Awards. We look forward to continuing to work with the company to create a wilder Nottinghamshire.”

The partners’ work at the 375 hectare Idle Valley Nature Reserve near Retford in North Nottinghamshire, the largest site cared for by the charity, is designed to enhance priority habitats including reedbed and wet grassland and led to the reintroduction of beavers to the county -was recognised with a Highly Commended Award in the Large Scale Nature Conservation category.

During 2020, the Trust began an ambitious restoration project incorporating water level management schemes, conservation grazing, scrub management and the preparations to re-introduce beavers to the site with Severn Trent funding. Extensive scrub management was undertaken on the wet grassland in the reserve and in November 2021 beavers were re-introduced to help combat scrub encroachment into reedbeds and wetland margins. This created new shallow wetland habitat features for amphibians, aquatic invertebrates, and wetland birds. Since introducing the colony to their 58-ha enclosure, two beaver kits were born in Nottinghamshire during summer 2022, the first in the county for over six centuries!

In addition, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust’s work to improve priority habitats and create new habitats on over 480ha of land at Misson Carr, Spalford Warren and Strawberry Hill Heaths Nature Reserves, (390ha designated as SSSI) was also Commended by CIEEM in their NGO Impact category. Funding from Severn Trent’s Great Big Nature Boost & Boost for Biodiversity enabled the Trust to develop a range of bespoke schemes to enhance and expand some of the county’s rarest habitats to benefit scarce species such as turtle dove and woodlark.

The charity has also worked with farmers and landowners to create new wet grassland and wader scrapes to benefit some of the rarest breeding birds in the county including redshank, and scrub clearance has taken place at multiple high priority sites, including locations in Sherwood Forest, to recreate suitable habitats for protected species such as nightjar and woodlark. The cleared scrub has also reduced the risk of fire, from anti-social behaviour.