Ownership of Dixon Meadows has been transferred from CH Dixon Charitable Trust (DCT), which originally bought the land in 2000 to protect it for wildlife and people. It has since been managed for the benefit of the local community with the objectives of enhancing wildlife conservation, education in conservation and the quality of the river for fishing.

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust was thought to be the best organisation to own and manage the land in keeping with DCT’s objectives. The name Dixon Meadows was given in recognition of all the hard work the DCT Trustees Miss Anne Dixon and Miss June Taylor had put into managing the land for wildlife and local people until they recently passed away.

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust is the only charity in Wiltshire concerned with all aspects of the environment; it has a long, successful track record of enhancing and managing nature reserves for wildlife and people, including chalk stream and water meadow habitats, which are found at Dixon Meadows.

The Trust has owned, restored, improved and managed the adjacent Langford Lakes nature reserve for the benefit of nature and the public for more than two decades.

The new land connects to the existing reserve through the River Wylye; the two areas will be managed together. This newly expanded space for nature aligns with the Trust’s wider strategy to create bigger, buffered and better-connected landscapes across Wiltshire.

A key part of this strategy is to work with local communities and landowners to achieve landscape-scale change and ensure that 30% of land is managed for nature by 2030. Protecting chalk landscapes around the River Wylye is crucial to achieving this goal. This new land will complement the Trust’s recently announced Wylye Valley Chalk Stream Project. Through a new collaboration with farmers, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust will reconnect and restore the River Wylye’s floodplain over a 20-kilometre stretch of currently under-utilised farmland, thanks to Landscape Recovery funding.