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This year on National Meadows Day, we are campaigning for the protection of irreplaceable meadows – and we need your help!
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2 July 2025
Britain’s historic meadows are living archives of our cultural, farming and natural heritage – every bit as significant as historic buildings or monuments. Yet these irreplaceable habitats are vanishing at an alarming rate, now covering just 0.8% of England’s land in tiny fragments, totaling an area of around half of Cornwall (406 square miles).
Today, on the eve of National Meadows Day (5 July), conservation charity Plantlife is urging the public to demand urgent action to safeguard what remains of irreplaceable meadows —before they are lost forever.
“No one would consider knocking down the Houses of Parliament and rebuilding it elsewhere,” said Nicola Hutchinson, Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Conservation, Plantlife. “Yet nature is being bulldozed by bricks and mortar in today’s political priorities, on the false promise of it being replaced in another location. You cannot recreate decades of ecological richness – these grasslands are irreplaceable – once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.”
Plantlife’s Lugg Meadow nature reserve in Herefordshire – a floodplain meadow recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 – is older than the Houses of Parliament. Home to nationally scarce and vulnerable plant species, including Herefordshire’s Narrow-leaved water-dropwort Oenanthe silaifolia, it is currently under threat from proposed development on neighbouring land.
In England, the UK Government is proposing sweeping changes to planning policy with the Planning and Infrastructure Bill which puts our most beloved habitats and wildlife at risk. Plantlife is calling on Government to protect these meadows by adding priority habitat grasslands to the official list of Irreplaceable Habitats – a designation that currently includes habitats like ancient woodlands and lowland raised bogs – based on age, uniqueness, species diversity and rarity.
The charity argues that meadows which meet this irreplaceability criteria are being overlooked and therefore are more at risk from agricultural intensification, housing and other development.
The previous Government committed to publicly consult on the interim Irreplaceable Habitats list in 2024 but this consultation has not yet taken place and the Labour government has not repeated the commitment.
“The Government has no way of tracking how many meadows are being lost. Most irreplaceable meadows lack adequate legal protection, so cling onto life in tiny, isolated fragments, vulnerable to eradication,” said Jenny Hawley, Policy & Advocacy Manager at Plantlife. “Without better protections, they risk vanishing beneath our feet.”
Beyond being a quintessential sight of summer, meadows were once the beating heart of communities, intrinsic to our traditional farming heritage.
Many have taken decades or even centuries to develop complex soil structures and relationships between species.
A single healthy meadow can be home to up to 150 species of wildflowers, which in turn support mammals and birds, pollinating bees, butterflies and hoverflies.
They are also essential to tackling the biodiversity and climate crises, locking down carbon, providing flooding alleviation and cleaner air and water – whilst producing food as farmland.The past century has seen our meadows ploughed, over-fertilised, bulldozed for buildings, and destroyed by misplaced tree planting.
Plantlife is urging members of the public to write to their MP and demand action. By calling for priority habitat grasslands to be formally recognised as Irreplaceable Habitats, we can secure better protections for the meadows that have shaped our landscapes, history, and identity.
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