Lincolnshire Roadside Nature Reserves and Local Wildlife Sites

Since 1960, Lincolnshire County Council has partnered with the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust to protect 80km of the county’s best verges as Roadside Nature Reserves. Between 2009 and 2015, citizen science surveys resulted in the designation of Local Wildlife Sites along a further 300km of road verge accounting for nearly 100ha of wildflower-rich habitat. The survey also identified 90% of the network with fewer wildflowers because verges were being cut too often or not often enough and cuttings were not being collected.  

In 2018, successful trials of biomass harvesting from road verges and green energy generation from the cuttings provided insight into new ways roadside vegetation management might improve roadside grassland biodiversity, reduce carbon footprint and even pay for itself with the revenues generated. Lessons learned from these trials have been critical to a successful bid to the Department for Transport for a £4M LiveLabs2 project now underway to continue this research on a larger scale with South Gloucestershire and West Sussex in partnership with Plantlife.  

‘Nature Isn’t Neat’ is a project that was initially piloted by Monmouthshire County Council and funded through the Welsh Government Rural Communities fund under the LEADER measure of the Rural Development Programme 2014 – 2020 and has slowly been expanding to other areas of the county. A key element of the project was changing the way the County Council manages its grassland on verges, and in open spaces and parks to create space for nature.  There was strong public support for the changes to grass mowing, and the appearance of many more wild-flowers during the spring and summer of 2020. 

The Welsh Government set up a Local Places for Nature Initiative offering capital grants to buy equipment such as cut-and-collect machines to improve grassland restoration.  The lessons learned from the ‘Nature Isn’t Neat’ pilot led to a successful bid to the National Heritage Lottery Fund and the Welsh Government for a grant that enabled purchase of ‘cut and collect’ machinery capable

The project is supported by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development: Europe Investing in Rural Areas and is funded by the Welsh Government’s Enabling of Natural Resources and Wellbeing Grant.