Dorset’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy
In early October 2025 BCP Council officially endorsed the Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) I think it's an ambitious and exciting plan co‑produced with Dorset Council and more than 70 organisations. If you have some time, I'd recommend reading through It.
It translates the national 30by30 aim – protecting 30 % of land and rivers for nature by 2030 – into local priorities and maps. Twelve themed priorities (grasslands, rivers, urban greening, etc.) and a list of 54 priority species provide direction.
The shared vision is for nature in Dorset to be thriving, resilient and connected … accessible to and celebrated by all. Unlike many previous policies, this strategy is legally mandated under the 2021 Environment Act and covers the entire county rather than isolated projects.
Past conservation efforts often protected individual sites while the wider landscape continued to degrade. The Local nature recovery strategy acknowledges that “every time we check on the state of nature it has further declined” and calls for an evolution from conservation to recovery. It introduces high‑opportunity nature areas covering roughly 49 % of Dorset. These zones were identified by landowners volunteering land and by modelling where new habitats would connect existing ones. They guide where to plant hedgerows, restore wetlands or rewild farmland. The strategy also pairs maps with activities so planners, farmers and community groups know what to do where, and emphasises collaboration through the Nature Recovery Dorset network.
All of this is both inspiration and challenge to me. I am a citizen of Dorset and enjoy nature on a weekly basis. I paddleboard in the harbour, walk through wareham forest and have been shaped emotionally through the wide variety of nature in this place. But how active am I in the conservation and recovery of the nature I enjoy? For people of faith, this is more than a policy document; it’s a call to recover a right relationship with creation. Dorset’s local nature recovery vision of a thriving, connected landscape echoes the biblical concept of shalom, a state of wholeness for people and land. Theologians from St Francis to N. T. Wright remind us that the earth is not a resource to be exploited but a gift to be stewarded. When councils map high‑opportunity areas and citizens count butterflies, they participate in a sacramental act – recognising the sacredness of their local place. The LNRS invites us to live that truth – to join farmers, foresters, teenagers and landowners who are much further ahead and more active than we might be in making Poole’s harbour, heath and hedges part of a larger story of restoration.
