Amazing Grazing: Help Our Rare Meadows and Precious Grasslands

UK grassland is in crisis. Healthy grasslands are a carbon-storing, climate-cooling, water-sponging, wildlife-rich life force, yet too often they’re undervalued, overlooked and ultimately lost. Conservation grazing is the best way to ensure they thrive.

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust has secured a major Landfill Communities Fund grant to support our conservation grazing programme. To access this funding, we need to raise essential Contributing Third Party (CTP) payments — donations that don’t fund the projects directly but unlock the full value of the grants.   

Every £1 you give unlocks around £10 of funding for Wiltshire’s wildlife and habitats. 

How does this work?

Landfill site operators pay a tax when they bury waste.  Some of this money goes into the Landfill Communities Fund and we can apply for this to help fund high-impact conservation work. To release a grant, the landfill operator requires a Contributing Third Party (CTP) payment. This payment is separate from the grant itself and enables the funding to be released to the environmental project. 

What is conservation grazing? 

Conservation grazing is the best way to ensure grassland wildlife recovers. It replicates low-intensity farming practices and the role once played by wild roaming herbivores on our landscape.  

How does conservation grazing help nature? 

When livestock are allowed to graze freely, they select different plants, and even different parts of the plant, to nibble or browse. Over time, this selective eating by the animals creates a varied structure within the plants and the habitat. It is this that helps create the right conditions for a wide range of insects, birds, reptiles, mammals, and plants to exist. 

What will this funding ensure?

• Healthy, happy livestock - welfare checks on each & every animal, clean water, medication, around-the-clock care during lambing and calving, veterinary care, plus good quality housing when required.
• Livestock can roam freely amongst wildflowers.
• Ability to move animals easily and safely between sites – purchase & maintenance of specialist livestock kit, essential equipment and machinery. 

Every £1 you give unlocks around £10 of support for wildlife and habitat restoration: 

• £10 helps unlock around £100
• £25 helps unlock around £250
• £50 helps unlock around £500
• £100 helps unlock around £1,000 

CTP donations are paid to the landfill operator and as these donations do not directly fund the charitable project, they are not eligible for Gift Aid. 

Will you help unlock vital funding for our Amazing Grazing project, protecting Wiltshire's precious meadows and chalk grasslands for wildlife?