Our vision is of a 40-mile-long wildlife-rich corridor, connecting the coast at Druridge Bay to the Scottish border at Kielderhead and Whitelee Moor National Nature Reserves, with the Rothbury Estate at its heart.

Wildlife Corridors need to be like our road network. We have motorways and major A roads that can handle a lot of traffic and move people quickly from one area to another.   Then we have smaller B roads and country lanes that move us around locally to individual villages, houses and farms.

The Lawton Report – Making Space for Nature (2010) – suggested that wildlife sites are “too small and isolated” and that they needed to be “bigger, better and more joined up”. Core areas need to be joined up with landscape corridors, whilst also stepping stones sites can also help species move and expand their range.

In the road example, the core areas such as Rothbury Estate, Kielderhead National Nature Reserve and others are our towns and cities and they need a high quality corridor to allow easy movement of species between them.  These corridors are the motorways and A roads.  These corridors may need active planning and consultation to form high quality routes between the core sites.

Our stepping stone sites are the villages, houses and farms joined by B roads and country lanes.  They are our nature reserves, areas of woodland, ponds, meadows and scrubby areas. These sites also need connectivity between them through hedges, streams, verges and margins.  The better quality and more continuous this connectivity is - the easier it for species to move around and thrive.

The Wilder Northumberland Network is working towards helping landowners form this connectivity between our core areas.  We are keen to work with new landowners to look at opportunities to strengthen the corridors that will help our nature recover.