Response to Draft Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) consultation
Dorset CAN
V5 29th July 2025
This document summarises DCAN’s response to Dorset’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) consultation and is complementary to individual responses which we have encouraged people to make via the web site.
Dorset CAN endorses the need for a LNRS in the context of widespread UK-wide nature depletion and where locally only 44% of Dorset’s SSSI’s are in a favourable condition and 45% of Sites of Nature Conservation Interest are in a good, maintained condition. Correcting this will require regenerative rather than purely sustainable policies as we are trying to build back, not just stop the decline. This regenerative approach would be consistent with the stated intention to protect and conserve a minimum of 30% of land and sea for biodiversity by 2030.
Dorset CAN applauds Dorset Council for delivering an impressive draft LNRS resulting from widespread collaboration with local and national organisations. This document is a carefully considered and detailed introduction to the potential and desirability of local nature recovery. It delineates the existing protections, priority habitats and provides detail of where enhancements could link up those areas. The associated maps provide a comprehensive series of layers showing a classification of the land and its biodiversity and highlighting areas suitable to enhance and recover. The document also lists the kind of activities that could bring about those changes such as regenerative farming practices. It therefore provides a baseline necessary to target enhancements and to measure progress.
What Dorset’s LNRS does not do is show how we can get to the key target of 30-by-30 in such a short timescale and the monitoring required to ensure that this key target is being met. In this sense it is a detailed vision, but falls short of being a practical strategy. What is lacking is an action plan and targets as to how to deliver the vision and encourage the necessary people and organisations into action. This lack of an execution and monitoring plan unfortunately undermines the document and this needs to be addressed urgently either as an update to the Dorset LNRS or as a separate initiative.
We suspect that the Dorset LNRS will speak mainly to a constituency that is already actively engaged in various dimensions of wildlife conservation. However, it has little hope of engaging the 25% of the Dorset population which DWT says is the critical mass needed to achieve the ‘30 by 30’ target nor the large number of farmers and landowners not yet engaged. We don’t underestimate the level of activity and resources that will be required to achieve this. The strategy will have to involve a major on-going effort and collaboration through local environmental/climate change groups, agricultural organisations and Town and Parish Councils.
As regards the content of the document, we would like to highlight a number of improvements which we hope Dorset Council would consider making to the LNRS, including the following:
Hedges.
Hedges have a key role as vital wildlife corridors within the farmed landscape benefitting wildlife biodiversity, habitat connectedness and the historical landscape. There are also key environmental and biodiversity benefits such as soil enhancement, reservoirs of predators of natural agricultural pests and carbon sequestration. Indeed, George Eustice, the former minister for the environment stated in 2023 that hedges are ‘probably our most important ecological building block in the farmed landscape’. Looking much more closely, they are also the main habitat for the endangered Dormouse. Unfortunately, the role of hedges has been watered down in the LNRS by not identifying them as a specific stand-alone priority area (as, for example, Devon does in its LNRS).
Rivers and waterways.
The LNRS would be strengthened if it were to emphasise the essential need to reduce the amount of pollution entering our water courses by better managing agricultural practices, the farm environment (e.g. slurry tanks) and the interaction with the built environment through handling residential greywater, sewage, septic tank effluent and road run-off. In addition, there is no mention of the adverse impact of spills from combined sewage overflows and other Water & Sewage Company infrastructure. There needs to be a greater focus in the LNRS on rivers and the various ways in which local groups are already tackling river issues across the county. Activities relating to rivers, lakes and wetlands could be strengthened by naming the key target sites (schools, holiday parks, car parks, business parks, etc) where significant improvements to wastewater handling and management can be achieved most easily. It would also be helpful to highlight comparative data showing changes in river water quality, fish and invertebrate populations.
Chemicals and Plastics.
The use of chemical, pesticides and herbicides in farming, gardening and roadside management is a major scourge on the environment. Although this is given prominence in the LRNS, we believe this is an area where much more can be done to monitor and discourage their use locally and for leadership to be shown by Dorset Council for example in working towards implementing a full glyphosate ban on council land and leading a campaign to reduce the use of toxic chemicals on publicly and privately owned land across the county.
Maps.
The maps contained in the LNRS contain a comprehensive series of layers showing a classification of the land and its biodiversity and highlighting areas suitable for enhancement and recovery. These maps can be updated and improved as new information becomes available – for example, data on species abundance and the changing environments as regenerative practices and other initiatives kick in. However, we are concerned about the map showing the best opportunities for nature improvement. Instead of being based on scientific analysis of the most nature-depleted areas, it is mainly based on locations where farmers and landowners have put forward their own projects for nature recovery – often for commercial reasons. As a result, this map is misleading and cannot be used, for example, to test whether proposed housing development sites are in conflict with, or supportive of, nature recovery.
Volunteers.
** ** There is more that can be done to recognise the valuable role played by ** ** volunteers in engaging members of the public in productive Nature Recovery by surveying, mapping, testing and planning activities. Such projects need further nurturing and supporting for example:
o The Great Big Dorset Hedge (GBDH) project (itself misrepresented as purely a monitoring project in the LNRS) has deployed volunteers to survey 850 km of hedgerows on over 100 Dorset farms which have been followed up by planting and restoration projects. These sorts of activities are highly motivating for people wanting to do something positive for nature recovery and provide a key bridge between the urban and rural communities. Training is provided and quickly unqualified people become effective and engaged contributors to nature recovery. It should not be underestimated the number of farmers/landowners who are also engaged with nature recovery through their involvement.
o The Clean Rivers of West Dorset Group (see below) and Dorset CAN are pioneers in the Rights of Nature and River Rights movement. A recent meeting brought together representatives of 11 local rivers to discuss how to extend the recent declaration of a Charter for the River Char. There is a clear role for the LNRS in naming and promoting this work.
Dorset Council.
The LNRS underplays the very significant role that Dorset Council needs to play in achieving the priorities and visions identified in the document. Brief mentions of Nature Recovery Dorset and farmer clusters are insufficient. One key role of Dorset Council is to provide support in the administrative aspects of volunteer work in nature recovery. Examples would be generic risk assessment templates for commonly done volunteer activities, overarching insurance policies, safeguarding policies etc. These sorts of activities take up so much time and in many cases mean that volunteer groups tend to be skewed towards the type of people who can do the paperwork which means excluding other demographics. These could also be rolled out to Parish Councils who are usually even more restricted in what they can ask volunteers to do and how they can manage volunteer groups.
Dorset Council could also create and facilitate a wide range of valuable projects in the community including:
o Catchment-based landowner clusters (like the Brit Valley Project) to help farmers, householders and businesses that own land along the same river system work together to reduce pollution and regenerate river life.
o Local initiatives (like Char Valley Lifelines) to encourage farmers, householders and businesses to stop using chemical pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and fungicides.
o Co-ordinating the many community river initiatives (e.g. the Clean Rivers of West Dorset group) which could undertake monitoring chemicals and other pollutants in rivers and improving maintenance of septic tanks.
o Replication of successful existing projects landscape-scale recovery projects such as the Wareham Arc project over other catchment areas.
o Encouraging and facilitating the involvement of T&PCs in Nature Recovery and to produce action plans for their areas often involving local landowners. This may require funding, informing and rolling out workshops to introduce the LNRS to communities as yet largely unengaged.
Funding.
Funding is biased towards developing biodiversity net gain (BNG) credits supplied by housing developers. Whilst we understand that Biodiversity Net Gain Credits are seen as being integral to funding nature recovery, we have serious misgivings about the long-term effectiveness of this as a means to deliver habitat improvements. We also have strong concerns that this system will be poorly monitored and manipulated (“gamed”) by the developers for commercial gain. A recent study for Wild Justice, Lost Nature, by University of Sheffield researchers, published in December 2024 looked at the delivery of ecological commitments by housing developers and found that only half of the ecological enhancements (53%) that had been promised were actually delivered. This fell to a third when newly planted trees were excluded. Successful BNG is achieved by rigorous pre and post monitoring of a development and enforcing of the proposed enhancements. In the case of BNG credits being transferred to another site, habitats lost to development cannot necessarily be replaced, even in the longer term of 30 years. Instead, we would like to see an ongoing discussion on what resources are needed to deliver the actual LNRS that is funded from more reliable, long-term sources of income.