In March Severn Trent announced the long-term environmental commitments they plan to deliver alongside their new social and governance standards. Their environmental commitments form their biggest ever nature ambition, the ‘Great Big Nature Boost’.
How big is the Great Big Nature Boost?
They’ll be working with our specialist conservation partners and up to 9,000 farmers, landowners, and estate managers to boost nature across 12,000 acres of land in the Severn Trent region by 2027. In doing this they’ll also be helping to improve over 2,000km of rivers and will plant over 1.3m trees.
The scheme will:
- Create wildflower meadows to encourage beneficial insects and birds, which are natural predators of pests that would otherwise damage farmers’ crops. Farmers then use less pesticides, reducing the risk of chemicals running into local rivers.
- Restore moorland in the Upper Peak District, the moors provide important habitats for some truly amazing bird species such as curlew and skylark. Healthy moorland also helps to make soil less prone to erosion and reduces the impact of flooding along rivers and streams.
- Restore bog and peatland: healthy peatbogs trap and store millions of tonnes of carbon and absorb vast quantities of water, acting like big sponges. In many places, peat has been drained, dried out, and exposed to the elements. This releases carbon back into the atmosphere and allows sediment to be washed into watercourses.
