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NPA offers nature grants to celebrate Jubilee year

NPA offers nature grants to celebrate Jubilee year

PUBLISHED ON: 5 MAY 2022

The New Forest National Park Authority is celebrating The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee by offering grants of up to £10,000 to help fund projects around sustainable living and creating spaces for nature in the National Park.

With £30,000 in funding available, the NPA is looking to continue its success in supporting local projects that help tackle the climate and nature crises. Since 2006 around £2.4 million in grants has funded more than 300 schemes that help protect the New Forest’s precious landscape.

In this celebratory year, the NPA is inviting community groups, green groups, charities, schools and youth groups based in the New Forest National Park to apply for grants available from its Sustainable Communities Fund (SCF). These are for projects which improve wildlife and habitats, reduce carbon emissions or connect new groups of people to nature.

Smaller grants are available for up to £150. These have helped to provide new native planting, bug hotels, hedgehog homes, nest boxes, bird feeders, pollinator trails, water recycling, and compost facilities.

Larger grants, now available for up to £10,000, have supported energy improvements to community buildings, as well as interpretation panels and wild play zones.

More recently the SCF has helped:

  • Pilley Community Shop to expand into new premises. The new building – scheduled to open at the end of August – will enable the shop to become even more of a social resource for the community and continue to save food miles. The shop champions local produce and is a New Forest Marque member.
  • Solent Rescue Independent Lifeboat (based at Lepe Country Park) to replace fluorescent lights in the boatshed with energy-efficient lighting.
  • Artists Luke Pell and Lucy Cash to support under-represented groups in the New Forest to connect with each other and develop inspiration from the National Park via a series of creative walks and activities.

Grants are available for activities that achieve any of these aims:

  • Improving opportunities for wildlife and habitats: 

Providing new habitat – such as creating new ponds or wetlands; introducing native planting, wildflowers and other pollinators to attract bees and butterflies. Or enhancing existing habitat such as introducing bird and bat nesting/roosting opportunities, bug hotels, bee bricks, hedgehog homes or movement corridors.

  • Reducing carbon emissions:

Encouraging more walking and cycling, supporting locally-produced food and goods, promoting ‘reduce, reuse, and recycle’, disposing of litter responsibly, supporting clean energy.

  • Connecting new groups to nature:

Supporting ideas led by and/or engaging typically under-represented groups in the New Forest National Park. Enabling new experiences in and around the National Park for audiences from different communities, ages, backgrounds, experiences, and identities.

John Sanger, New Forest National Park Authority Member and Chair of its Sustainable Communities Fund, said: ‘We’re supporting the Jubilee celebrations with our grants, and helping communities to create space for nature.

‘Ensuring this precious landscape survives for future generations requires a team effort, and we’d like to thank people in our communities who respect and care for the New Forest.’

Find out more about the grants, and how to apply, at www.newforestnpa.gov.uk/scf.

-Ends-

 

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