Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust’s Together for Trees is one of the first environmental projects awarded a grant from the government’s £80 million Green Recovery Challenge Fund. Sixty eight projects have been awarded grants between £62k and £3.8 million to kick-start a pipeline of nature-based projects while creating and retaining jobs, with the first funding round seeing £40 million pot allocated. The second round of funding opens early next year.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced grants between £62,000 and £3.8 million to help create and retain thousands of green jobs. The projects, spread across England, will see trees planted – 800,000 in total – and protected landscapes and damaged habitats such as moorlands, wetlands and forests restored, alongside wider conservation work. The projects will also support environmental education and connecting people with green spaces.
Together for Trees aims to create 26 hectares of new native woodland, restore 1km of hedgerow and plant individual landscape trees to help mitigate the impact of dying ash trees.
The project will see the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust (YDMT) work with the communities in Sedbergh, Settle, Swaledale and Malham to identify areas to create new woodland – bringing landowners and 
volunteers together to help plant and maintain the new woodland. It will also create a new woodland trainee post which will enable a young person to live and work in the Dales, enhancing their employment prospects at the end of the programme.
Carol Douglas, Woodlands Officer at YDMT said: “This is fantastic news for woodland creation and local communities in the Dales. Alongside our loyal supporters and funders, we have been working hard on our Together for Trees programme for the last two years and have already helped to support the planting of 60,000 trees. This funding enables us to build on this important planting programme.
“We will be able to further enhance our work with local community members and disadvantaged individuals to experience the Dales, which will help to improve their well-being, develop skills and inspire green action.
“This is a great boost for this fantastic project and it is really pleasing that we are now in a position to take it forward and create new woodlands that more people can enjoy.”
The Green Recovery Challenge Fund is a key part of the government’s 10 Point Plan to kick-start nature recovery and tackle climate change. The fund is being delivered by the National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with Natural England and the Environment Agency.
Ros Kerslake, Chief Executive, National Lottery Heritage Fund, said: “Supporting our natural environment is one of the most valuable things we can do right now. All these projects are of huge benefit to our beautiful countryside and wildlife, but will also support jobs, health and wellbeing, which are vitally important as we begin to emerge from the coronavirus crisis.”
The government’s forthcoming Environment Bill aims to put the environment at the centre of policy making to ensure a cleaner, greener and more resilient country for the next generation. The fund is supporting a range of nature conservation and recovery and nature-based solutions projects, which will contribute towards government’s wider 25 Year Environment Plan commitments, including commitments to increase tree-planting across the UK to 30,000 hectares per year by 2025.
Source: News release 10 December from Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust.
Further information contact Mike Appleton at YDMT on 015242 51002 or email media@ydmt.org
