We are working together with communities and partners across Basingstoke and Deane to support nature recovery.
Following our ecological emergency declaration in 2021, we adopted our Biodiversity Strategy for Basingstoke and Deane 2023 to 2029 in 2024 to guide how we collaborate with others and take action. This webpage highlights some of our progress so far.
Our progress and work to date
Our efforts to increase the diversity of plants and wildlife across the borough include:
- collaborating with Natural Basingstoke to support more than 200 nature volunteers as they help us to care for over 300 hectares of green space
- progressing our intention to help make Basingstoke town centre greener
- actively maintaining around 80,000 trees and over 100 hectares of woodland, including planting over 1,000 trees in the last financial year
- working with Urban&Civic and Hampshire County Council to help bring forward a new 250-acre countryside park at Manydown, in western Basingstoke
- agreeing a partnership with NatureSpace and other local authorities in Hampshire to deliver a district licence scheme for Great Crested Newts
- undertaking a borough-wide biodiversity audit to get a better understanding of where we can make the biggest difference for plants and wildlife
- assisting the Hampshire Wildlife Trust to produce a toolkit to help parishes create wildlife maps
- encouraging communities and groups to take the parish pollinator pledge and support pollinating insects
- collaborating with Hampshire County Council and other partners to support the creation of Hampshire's local nature recovery strategy; and
- supporting the creation of new habitat banks locally so that developers’ funding can support wildlife in the borough, rather than further afield
Contact the team
Our teams are always looking at how we can take action, including with others, to help create a greener borough.
If you have ideas you would like to share, email natural environment team.