Wokingham Borough Council aims to protect and enhance plants and animals

Wokingham Borough Council has drafted a plan to protect and enhance the area’s biodiversity* – and is keen to hear local people’s views on it.

The draft Biodiversity Action Plan aims to halt the ongoing losses and to rebuild biodiversity in the borough, and to:

Raise awareness about the issues impacting local biodiversity
Outline targets and actions which to enhance biodiversity in the borough
Encourage and support community engagement; empowering local action Encourage management practices sympathetic to wildlife; promoting ‘good practice’ and providing guidance
Ensure policies are in place for the protection, management and enhancement of the local wildlife resource biodiversity
These aims will drive five habitat plans covering communities, towns and villages, woodland, grassland and hedgerows, and wetland and heathland. Each habitat plan has specific actions:

Promote volunteer conservation projects for heathland species such as nightjar and adders
Survey species such as otters, water voles and great crested newts
Increase availability of barn owl and kestrel nest boxes
Recruit and train volunteers to plant and maintain orchards
Provide workshops on conservation and biodiversity for young people
Manage urban green spaces such as churchyards, school grounds and cemeteries with biodiversity as an aim
Establish a biodiversity newsletter online
Improve/increase hedgehog habitats
Promote a volunteer study of hedgerows
The Biodiversity Action Plan will also include a focus to ensure that major new developments coming to the borough are designed with biodiversity in mind.

The consultation will run from March 6 for six weeks (until Thursday April 17).