Rewilding London

The Mayor of London’s Rewild London Fund aims to improve London’s network of wildlife sites, help connect people to nature and better support the capital’s wildlife

London’s Green Spaces
London has over 1,600 Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINCs) which are protected because of their importance for wildlife. These SINCs account for almost 20 per cent of the surface area of the city.

Green spaces in London range from wetlands, to woodlands, heathlands, and Richmond Park and are home to more than 15,000 species.
    
The fund acknowledges the importance of London’s green space for the local wildlife, the climate and the human population.
    
However, it also acknowledges that despite conservation efforts, biodiversity is deteriorating around the world and in London.
    
London’s parks, woodlands, nature reserves, wetlands and community gardens help keep London cool, reduce the risk of flooding, provide homes for wildlife and allow Londoners to enjoy nature.
    
Because of the physical and mental health benefits of nature, the Mayor of London has committed to ensuring that all Londoners live no more than a ten-minute walk away from a green space.
    
The Rewild London Fund aims to improve the network of wildlife sites, to connect people to nature and support wildlife.
    
In order to protect this network and ensure its resilience to pressures like climate change, green spaces need to be well managed, expanded and better connected. This can be done though habitat creation, enhancement and restoration.

SINCs
The first round of the Fund supported 19 projects to improve and connect more than 50 SINCs, and to create and restore more than 250 hectares of wildlife habitats across the city. Most SINCs are managed by boroughs or other public bodies. However, it is estimated that 40-60 per cent are not covered by any regular management to conserve or enhance their special biodiversity. Some are also statutorily designated as Local Nature Reserves or as internationally or nationally important sites for the habitats or species that live there.
    
There are three tiers of SINCs. These include Sites of Metropolitan Importance. More than 150 of these sites, which are of regional significance for nature, have been identified. Examples of these sites include Ruislip Woods, Ingrebourne Marshes and Farthing Downs.
    
Sites of Borough Importance include woodlands, rivers, grasslands and mature parks with ancient trees and meadows – almost 800 of these have been identified, covering an area of 12,000 hectares.
    
Sites of Local Importance include publicly accessible parks and green spaces with a local intrinsic nature conservation value. Around 460 of these sites have been identified, with a total area of 1,700 hectares.

Round 2    
Round 2 of the Fund closed for applications on 28 November 2022, with grantees receiving their first payment and projects starting in January 2023. £850,000 was available, with grants of between £10,000 and £50,000 for smaller projects and up to £150,000 for larger projects. £750,000 has been contributed through Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund.
    
This round of funding will support projects that help create new priority habitats and enhance SINCs. Priority habitats include acid grassland, chalk grassland, coastal and floodplain grazing marsh, fen, marsh and swamp, heathland, lowland meadows, open mosaic habitats on previously developed land, ancient woodland, wet woodland, orchards, reedbeds and rivers and streams.
    
A Rewilding Taskforce has also been established to look at opportunities for rewilding in London and also investigate wider benefits including reduced flood risk, city cooling and access to nature.
    
The fund aims to support SINC managers to overcome barriers to good site management, as well as support projects that demonstrate innovative or strategic approaches to improving the resilience of the SINC network.
    
Projects that deliver outcomes in line with the Green New Deal and the Rewild London Fund aims will be prioritised. This includes projects that: focus on outcomes that address the ecological emergency and ensure sites are better managed, bigger and better connected; help improve sites in the longer term, particularly to sustain and expand important populations of priority species; demonstrate innovation with new approaches to overcoming long-standing barriers to site management; and share good practice across London.

Beneficiaries
Projects set to benefit include those expanding and buffering SINCs through new habitat creation on adjacent land, such as the creation of new chalk grassland banks; works to enable more effective and efficient site management, such as infrastructure and equipment to bring amenity grassland into meadow management; trials and monitoring of innovative management techniques that can be rolled out to other sites, such as no-fence collars for conservation grazing projects; and improving habitats between SINCs to ensure they are better connected and more resilient, such as creating habitat stepping stones to help secure landscape connectivity for priority species. Others could include projects which are enhancing more than one SINC to improve a local nature network, such as installation of reedbeds along a waterway/ waterbody to create a local network; ecological surveys or monitoring of the outcomes of management to inform future site management and local nature recovery plan development, such as hydrological studies to design wetland creation schemes; projects creating the conditions for potential species (re)introductions that meet wider conservation objectives (e.g. invertebrate diversity and abundance); and focused staff training activities to make sure that those responsible for the day-to-day planning and management of SINCs have the right skills to do so.

Support available
London Wildlife Trust will be providing support to organisations who may need it. This support may include expertise on habitat management, restoration and creation; how to integrate projects into existing management plans and advice on the suite of habitat and species surveys required; what surveys might be needed and who to contact.
    
Those eligible to apply include local authorities and civil society organisations which manage land. These could include: registered charities including charitable incorporated organisations; formally constituted community groups; social and not-for-profit businesses including community interest companies and social enterprises and community benefit.
    
The funding can be spent on the purchase of trees and plants for habitat creation; purchase of other materials to improve SINCs and create new habitat; fencing, paths and other site infrastructure that is directly related to SINC habitat improvements and management; machine and equipment purchase or hire to create or restore habitat; and staff and/or contractor costs for project delivery, including labour, design, project management, volunteer management. It can also be spent on specialist fees, for example, an ecologist or arboriculturalist; surveys or monitoring; volunteer expenses; payment of administrative costs directly related to delivery of the work, e.g. consents for works on river; event costs, such as training workshops for staff, volunteers or contractors and PPE or other equipment necessary for safe project delivery.

Projects
Recipients of funding from the first round include Link the SINCs in Sutton which tests how recycled building materials can be repurposed to create habitats for the small blue, chalk hill blue and dark green fritillary butterflies and King George’s Park in Wandsworth which is creating new meadows to provide a habitat corridor for pollinators – shire horses will be used to prepare the ground for wildflowers.
    
Get inVOLEd in Kingston has been reintroducing water voles into the Hogsmill River, where they have been extinct since 2017 and Spider Park in Hillingdon is joining up existing SINCs along the Yeading brook by creating new wildlife habitats such as ponds, wetlands, meadows and scrub.
    
Enfield Grazing is introducing large animal grazing to three sites to restore habitats and the Greenway Pollinator Trail in Newham is creating new habitats for bees, hoverflies and butterflies across the length of the Greenway – a seven kilometre pedestrian and cycle route and green corridor.