Dozens of Peak District farmers have been awarded a £100,000 lottery grant to help spearhead nature recovery and peatland restoration.
Peakland Environmental Farmers (PEF), an environmental co-operative of 77 farmers, has been awarded the grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The central aims of the co-operative are nature recovery, peatland restoration, clean water and net zero by 2040.
In the long term it is looking to replace the loss of farm subsidies by securing a blend of public and private finance to restore habitats in the Peak District.
The Heritage Fund grant will be used to enable PEF, which has so far been established on a largely voluntary basis, to attain legal standing.
The funding will also be used to carry out ecological surveys of its members’ land holdings and develop landscape-scale conservation plans.
This will provide a platform from which the co-op aims to secure public funding through Environmental Land Management Schemes and private finance via natural capital markets.
Tom Noel, local farmer and chair of PEF said: “Through collaborative working and with the right level of investment, farmers can achieve nature recovery alongside food production over a large scale.
"Farmers manage 72% of the UK countryside and so are vital to achieving the transformative change needed to meet the challenges of national biodiversity decline, climate change and restoring iconic landscapes.”
Chloe Palmer who facilitates two smaller Farmer Clusters within the larger PEF, Hope Valley and Bradfield Farmers, recently managed the distribution of 31,000 hedge plants.
This was part of a project to plant 24k kilometres of hedgerows in four years, which she said will capture carbon and prevent pollution.
Ms Palmer added: “These new hedges will benefit a wide range of wildlife including threatened farmland birds such as song thrushes, linnets and tree sparrows.
"Further ahead we are looking forward engaging the wider Peak District community in initiatives to restore stone walls and moorland."
PEF consists of 77 farmers in the Dark Peak and Southwest Peak area of the Peak District, covering 40,000 hectares.
