Cheshire and Warrington Local Nature Recovery Strategy

The Cheshire and Warrington Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) outlines the county's key priorities for restoring and enhancing its natural environment, along with recommended actions to achieve these goals. It also highlights specific areas where efforts should be focused to yield the greatest benefits for local wildlife and habitats.

Covering Cheshire West and Chester, Cheshire East, and Warrington, this LNRS strategy is part of a nationwide initiative, with 48 strategy areas across England aimed at reversing the decline of nature.

The LNRS seeks to guide conservation efforts and investments towards areas where they can have the most significant positive impact, while safeguarding Cheshire and Warrington’s most valuable natural resources from unnecessary losses or harm.

We invite you to contribute to this public consultation by exploring the information and maps and completing our short survey below. If you are a farmer or landowner, we also have a second survey designed specifically to gather your insights on how the LNRS relates to your land.

Cheshire and Warrington’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy is our collective blueprint to turn around nature’s decline and restore it.

To put nature’s recovery into all decisions and activities so that nature, people and businesses thrive, to make Cheshire and Warrington Nature Positive by 2030.

The strategy highlights Cheshire and Warrington's unique natural environment, key habitats, and species. It outlines priorities and opportunities for action, practical steps for implementation, local nature maps with layered information, and resources for habitats, urban areas, and farmland, with additional technical details in the appendices.

Full details can be found at:   www.cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk/LNRSconsultation .

Within the LNRS 7 Priority Habitats and Themes are identified in:

1. Woodland, Hedgerows and Trees
2. Grassland and Heathland
3. Watercourses
4. Peat and Wetlands
5. Nature-based Solutions
6. Farmland
7. Urban

Each of these is associated with a set of Priorities—broad, high-level goals for guiding nature recovery efforts within a particular habitat type or theme. Within each Priority, there is a collection of Actions that outline specific tasks or objectives necessary to achieve that goal. The following example for Woodland, Hedgerows, and Trees illustrates this structure:

As shown in the the example above, actions can target areas already good for nature, focusing on enhancement, safeguarding, or buffering. Alternatively, they may aim to create, expand or improve the right habitats or a mix of habitats to improve connectivity, ensure nature’s recovery, and create a more robust ecological network. In working out where these actions would be most appropriate a process was carried out resulting in the creation of the Local Habitat Maps below.

Maps have been created to illustrate the potential areas where nature’s recovery could be delivered in the future, to compliment our Core Nature Sites which show existing areas designated for nature.

These are formally protected and important local sites for nature including sites with a statutory designation e.g. Local Nature Reserves, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Special Protection Areas, sites with a non- statutory designation i.e. Local Wildlife Sites, as well as areas of Irreplaceable Habitat, and Ancient Woodland and Veteran Trees.

These are the most important sites for nature, core areas of our ecological network and the foundation of our Nature Recovery Network that we need to protect, build upon, connect and expand.

Interact with the map below to explore the locations of Cheshire and Warrington's Core Nature Sites:

Opportunity Areas For Nature Recovery are the best places across the county to carry out action for nature that also have wider environmental benefits. As areas deemed most appropriate and beneficial to carry out Mapped Actions they highlight the best ways to connect and safeguard our Core Nature Sites. They are the best places for strategic investment in nature’s recovery.

You can interact with the two maps below to explore Cheshire and Warrington's Opportunity Areas For Nature Recovery:

Having identified the best actions to take in Cheshire and Warrington to improve and restore nature it was decided which ones were suitable for mapping — meaning we could determine specific locations where they would be most effective. Out of all the proposed actions, 48 were deemed suitable for mapping, representing 6 of the 7 Priority Habitats and Themes (no Farmland Actions were mapped).

Mapped actions could either be implemented on:

1. Core Nature Sites: The sites that are currently good for nature, though not those with statutory designations, like SSSIs, which already have management plans above the scope of this strategy. Actions mapped to these sites are shown in pink on the map below.
2. Opportunity Areas: These are locations which would be highly suitable for an action, identified by evaluating multiple data sources and outputs from from habitat connectivity models, and ecosystem service analyses. Mapped actions in Opportunity Areas are shown in green on the map below.

The map explorer allows you to explore these mapped actions and visualise how they contribute to the ecological restoration of Cheshire and Warrington. You can toggle entire groups, such as Urban Actions or Waterways Actions, on and off for viewing. For a more detailed look, you can expand a group to toggle individual measures on or off:

If you are interested in the technical details of the mapping process, the following documents provide valuable insights:

• The Methodology Document outlines the steps followed to produce the maps and the rationale behind key decisions.
• The Interpretation Document explains how modeling outputs and data analyses were interpreted and applied throughout the process."

They will be made available in appendix 5 later in the year.

We would like your help filling in the survey to get a view from different groups.

We will use your feedback to refine the strategy and finalise the Opportunity Areas for Nature Recovery layer, guiding investments toward nature recovery and ecosystem services where they will have the greatest impact over the next 5 to 10 years.

You can fill in the survey from this page or click the expand button in the top right of the survey to open it in a new tab

Final Opportunity Areas For Nature Recovery will target Biodiversity Net Gain investment (BNG) to where it will provide the best outcomes.

The LNRS will inform Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes, as discussed in the Agricultural Transition Plan (2024). More details are expected later this year.

It is at the discretion of any landowner or land manager, as to whether they would like to attract or deliver investment for nature, including how this might be most appropriately integrated and balanced with other priorities, such as growing food (could be a pond in a corner, wildflower grassland strip alongside a hedge, new hedgerow, shelter belt, to converting whole fields to species rich grasslands or other habitats etc).

It is important to note that land mapped within the Opportunity Areas For Nature Recovery does not provide any additional designations or protection beyond current statutory status of Core Nature Sites.

Let us know if there are parts of your land that should be included but currently are not, or if your land is already recognised but you are not interested in pursuing investment or taking action for nature recovery at this time.

Even if neither applies, please complete the survey to confirm you have reviewed the information, understand the current status of your land, and are happy with how it is represented.

Please note:

a) that current Opportunity Areas For Nature Recovery will not change based solely on landowner feedback as they are identified through a comprehensive 'nature first' approach. Indications made here will help us and our partners to map the best connections for nature, where it will be most practical to deliver.

b) if the parcel of land in your ownership or management is not featured in the final mapped areas, it does not mean that improvements for nature won't be supported.

You can fill in the survey from this page of click the expand button in the top right of the survey to open it in a new tab

 ^{If you have any questions or encounter any issues with this webpage or the surveys, please reach out to us at:  naturesrecovery@cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk}