Plantlife’s Impact

Celebrating Plantlife’s achievements

At Plantlife, our aim is to make lasting positive change for wildflowers, plants and fungi. Our goal is to help mitigate the impact of climate change while rebuilding biodiversity within our ecosystems. We regularly join forces with others to ensure our money, influence and impact can go further. By working together, we can protect the vital habitats which so many plants and animals call home.

Helping threatened species

We work to protect and restore temperate rainforests, meadows and other environments for the benefit of rare and threatened species. This has had a major impact over the years, with many plants increasing in number as a direct result of our work.

During 2021/22 alone:

• Our volunteers in the Brecklands discovered the first new site for native Grape-hyacinth for several years. They also found Creeping Marshwort, an endangered species which is only found at three sites across the country.
• We discovered record numbers of Marsh Saxifrage – which is one of our most threatened plants – at Munsary Peatlands Reserve in Caithness.
• The number of Man Orchid and Clustered Bellflower plants increased at Ranscombe. Both of these threatened species recorded their best every year thanks to the way our team has managed their habitat.
• Working with partners in the Cairngorms, we helped discover several species new to the UK, and one species new to science. This has significantly increased our knowledge of fungi in mountain soils.

Our other achievements 

• We took part in a hugely successful Meadow Makers initiative. This helped to restore more than 400 hectares of grassland which is home to a huge variety of species. 
• An important project to Building Resilience in South West Woodlands – Plantlife came to an end. We worked with partners and local communities to survey 300 sites to get a snapshot of their health. This information has helped us better understand how to protect some of our rarest lichens. 
• We joined forces with Natural England and landowners to launch an ambitious 10-year project to save Juniper from extinction.  
• We were proud to be one of the few NGO’s to attend COP15 in Montreal in December 2022. This gave us the chance to speak up for plants on the global stage and build support for Important Plant Areas. Since the conference, we are also taking steps to get more involved in work to protect grasslands around the world.