BIG AREA SCHEMES

Wildlife in Shropshire has endured a range of pressures over the last 50 years, chiefly as a result of changing agricultural practices, urban development and road building. Now it is facing a new threat: climate change. No one knows exactly how changing temperatures will affect wildlife, but what we do know is that it'll be able to adapt and cope better if whole landscape areas - entire river valleys, for example, or ranges of hills - are in good ecological shape. No longer are we thinking in terms of simply saving isolated pockets of high conservation value - big is beautiful if nature is to survive in all its infinite variety.

The smaller a wildlife habitat the more vulnerable it is - species populations are more likely to succumb to hunger, disease, predators or accidental occurrences such as fire. So it is Shropshire Wildlife Trust's long term plan to see habitats restored or recreated on a large scale and to connect similar habitats through a system of wildlife corridors, such as hedgerows.

Shropshire's heathland restoration project, Back to purple is already showing what can be done. One of the biggest landscape restoration projects undertaken in the UK, it is already bringing back the heather and whinberries, the emperor moths and skylarks on a six-mile stretch of heathland along the Stiperstones ridge.

That's pretty impressive, but look two miles across the valley and there sits the huge heathland mass of The Long Mynd. Our vision is that these two areas are connected via corridors and stepping stones of hedges, woods and rough grazing that allow the free movement of wildlife. Creatures that cling on by a thread, like red grouse, cranberry and grayling butterflies, will have a much more secure future if we can provide them with a healthy, sizeable habitat.

One of the consequences of climate change is increased occurrence of flooding. Rainfall in the Welsh hills is rushed down to the river Severn and Vyrnwy, helped on its way by agricultural drainage systems that stop the old floodplains soaking up the water. Restoring the old water meadows would go a long way to alleviate flooding problems and also provide habitat for birds such as lapwing and curlew.

North Shropshire's distinctive and fragile Meres and Mosses are another natural candidate for a big area scheme.

The Wildlife Trusts launched a report in November 2006, Living Landscapes, calling on the Government to take action to promote stronger, more robust landscapes that will have a better chance of withstanding climate change. To download the report go to www.wildlifetrusts.org and find Free Publications.