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Goodleigh Hill CL wildflower meadow (Natural Networks project) by Jasmine Walters

Goodleigh Hill CL wildflower meadow by Jasmine Walters

Our projects

Natural Networks

We have a diverse range of wildlife-rich habitats across our beautiful county – from wetlands and woodlands to meadows and orchards. However, we know they are under pressure like never before. 

Natural Networks is a free advisory service for landowners, organisations and communities, aiming to enhance Worcestershire’s greenspaces and create corridors across the county to help improve and better link these important spaces for wildlife.

Following on from a seven year partnership with Worcestershire County Council, Worcestershire Wildlife Trust is continuing to run Natural Networks, providing wildlife enhancement advice and support, helping local people to make impactful changes to benefit nature.

With the ever-increasing pressures of climate change, intensive land management and development, it is more important than ever to ensure that our biodiversity hotspots are connected and safeguarded – the development of a natural network of wildlife corridors is vital.

To register your interest please get in touch with our Natural Networks team.

Map of Worcestershire, showing all the sites to have received advice from Natural Networks 2019-2026

Map of Worcestershire, showing all the sites to have received advice from Natural Networks 2019-2026

What's on offer?

The Natural Networks programme can help enable your land to play its part in a revitalised landscape. It’s a great opportunity to deliver habitat improvements for wildlife on land that cannot benefit from other schemes and funds. The project team are on hand to help and can offer the following:

  1. Advice. After you register, officers from Worcestershire Wildlife Trust will carry out a Biodiversity Enhancement Assessment, which aims to direct projects towards actions that enhance land for wildlife in the most appropriate way. The assessment involves looking for records of notable habitats and species in the area, surveying the current quality of the land for wildlife and presenting the findings and recommendations for future management in an in-depth written report.
  2. Continued support. If you are interested in undertaking enhancement recommendations following the advice, the team can help in signposting towards external grants that you may be eligible for and with any practical enhancement works (either with or without grant support). This can include reviewing grant applications to ensure everything is ecologically sound and helping with practical enhancement tasks, such as helping run work parties for your community (e.g. tree planting, bulb planting, small pond creation, etc). We know  there will be plenty of people and groups wanting to take up our support and so our capacity to help in this level of detail will depend on staff availability and the scale of the scheme proposed.

You can see previous project examples, covering a variety of sites and enhancement works, in our Natural Networks booklet and at the bottom of this page 

Can I get involved?

The programme is aimed at local Worcestershire businesses, town and parish councils, charities, voluntary groups, public bodies and land managers who would like to help nature but are not able to access agri-environment schemes. 

If you’d like to learn more about how to enhance your land for the benefit of wildlife, please get in touch with our officers Becca Bratt becca.bratt@worcestershirewildlifetrust.org or Finley Limburn-Reynolds finley@worcestershirewildlifetrust.org for more information.

How is the programme funded?

Natural Networks has been very fortunate to have received funding from many partners in the past. These include the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund, the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, the Environment Agency, the Forestry Commission and Worcestershire’s local authorities.

We continue to benefit from occasional funding from some of these sources but since April 2026 Natural Networks has been largely paid for by the Trust itself, benefitting from kind donations from our members and supporters.

Some of our projects so far...