Farmers launch landscape recovery scheme

A multi-million-pound nature restoration project covering 3,000 hectares of land has launched in the Cotswolds.

The Evenlode Landscape Recovery Project, in Oxfordshire, is the third scheme of its kind in England, and will cover an area the size of Cheltenham.

It aims to reconnect floodplains whilst restoring rivers including the Evenlode, the Glyme and the Dorne, and is supported by more than 50 local farmers.

Allan Lovell, chairman of the Environment Agency (EA), said he hoped the project would "make a real difference" in the local area.

"We are extremely optimistic that this project will succeed and have very good impact in many ways related to the recovery of nature and increase in biodiversity," he said.

"It will also be good for the farmers, they will continue to be producing food on the land, so it really is trying to tick all the boxes."

The North East Cotswolds Farmer Cluster is a group made up of more than 50 farmers and land managers that have lent part of their land to the project.

Tim Field, the group's general secretary, said: "This project has been built by farmers and with farmers, who know this land inside out."

"We've seen the pressures building year after year with flooding and tired soils and knew that significant change needed to happen."

He added that the scheme showed "what's possible when farmers work together for the long-term taking shared responsibility for their landscapes and passing it on in better shape than they inherited".

Lovell explained that the project's "principal objective" was to improve the state of rivers running through the land.

This was "all with the idea of both providing flood resilience and improving water quality", he added.

Money for the project has come from a more-than £100m government fund for schemes across the country, as well as from the private sector.

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