Lottery grant worth £100,000 to help Peak District farmers boost nature
Dozens of Peak District farmers have been awarded a £100,000 lottery grant to help spearhead nature recovery and peatland restoration.
Peakland Environmental Farmers (PEF), an environmental co-operative of 77 farmers, has been awarded the grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The central aims of the co-operative are nature recovery, peatland restoration, clean water and net zero by 2040.
In the long term it is looking to replace the loss of farm subsidies by securing a blend of public and private finance to restore habitats in the Peak District.
The Heritage Fund grant will be used to enable PEF, which has so far been established on a largely voluntary basis, to attain legal standing.
The funding will also be used to carry out ecological surveys of its members’ land holdings and develop landscape-scale conservation plans.
This will provide a platform from which the co-op aims to secure public funding through Environmental Land Management Schemes and private finance via natural capital markets.
Tom Noel, local farmer and chair of PEF said: “Through collaborative working and with the right level of investment, farmers can achieve nature recovery alongside food production over a large scale.
“Farmers manage 72% of the UK countryside and so are vital to achieving the transformative change needed to meet the challenges of national biodiversity decline, climate change and restoring iconic landscapes.”
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