Read more about the work of Dr Rob Hawkes on the recent DEFRA blog. He explains the outcome of the recent DEFRA Test and Trial with BFWN producing a landscape scale map of cultivated margins which are home to many threatened species. How could this be a reality in the Breckland countryside? “Encouragingly, most of the Breckland group members said that this mapping tool was useful for them, and they were more likely to engage with coordinated landscape-scale conservation as a result of this test and trial. However, maps alone are only part of the solution. For many of them, the crucial detail is the payment rates they will get for delivering options in schemes like this. On some farms, if those payments aren’t competitive, the conservation work is unlikely to go ahead. This would prevent our blueprint from turning into a reality.”
