The Wylye Chalk Stream Project has been successful in the second round of the Government’s Landscape Recovery scheme, which awards funding for farmers and land managers for projects that support net zero, protected sites and habitat creation. 

The project was one of 34 successful second-round Landscape Recovery projects, which all demonstrated pioneering ideas that will reverse the decline in nature and support the sustainable production of food.

The Wylye Chalk Stream Project will be the first landscape-scale collaboration of its kind focused on enhancing a large stretch of chalk stream for the benefit of wildlife in Wiltshire. The project will be led by Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and delivered in partnership with the Wylye Valley Farmers group and Wessex Rivers Trust.

World-famous, globally rare and extraordinarily biodiverse, Wiltshire’s chalk streams are an irreplaceable part of England’s natural landscape. However, like many, the River Wylye has been dredged, straightened and polluted over the last few centuries, putting its unique flora and fauna at risk of irreversible decline.

As a result of reduced water quality, low flows, and poor-quality river habitat, wildlife such as river flies, Atlantic salmon, grayling and wild brown trout have suffered, whilst invasive plant species such as Himalayan balsam have been outcompeting native flora on river banks. Water meadows along the river have also disappeared, becoming fragmented and scarce, limiting the ability of wading birds, such as snipe, green sandpipers and lapwings, to spread and flourish.

This partnership will re-establish the vitality, diversity, and ecological abundance of the Wylye Valley by restoring the river’s natural relationship with its floodplain over a 20km reach of currently under-utilised farmland. The river’s resilience to extreme temperatures and flows as a result of climate change will also be improved, as well as its ability to capture and diffuse any harmful excess nutrients and pollutants from the wider landscape.

The work will include chalk stream restoration, floodplain reconnection, regenerative farming, and the creation of natural river valley habitats such as water meadows, ponds and streams.

This is a key project contributing to Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s goal of landscape-scale nature recovery by 2030, by restoring natural processes, restoring biodiversity, managing more land for nature and creating nature-based solutions with partners.