On 25 May 2026, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced a £30 million Wildlife-Rich Habitat Fund to restore and create habitat across England’s National Parks, National Landscapes and the Broads. The department said the programme will support thousands of hectares of new or improved habitat over three years, with projects expected in areas from Dartmoor to the Lake District. The policy case is direct. Defra says habitat degradation remains a leading cause of decline for species found in protected areas, including hedgehogs, hazel dormice, water voles, curlews and turtle doves. The new funding is presented as a practical response: paying for habitat work in places already designated for their environmental value, rather than relying only on future planning or regulatory change.
The money is ring-fenced at £10 million in each financial year from 2026-27 to 2028-29. According to the government announcement, 36 of England’s 44 protected landscapes will take part in the first year, with schemes selected against local priorities rather than a single national template. Delivery will run through the existing Farming in Protected Landscapes programme infrastructure. That matters administratively because it gives Defra a ready-made route for approvals and payments, while the department says the new fund remains separate from both the wider farming budget and the Farming in Protected Landscapes pot itself.
Defra used Gun Moor in the Peak District as an early example of the type of work it wants to support. The Peak District National Park Authority, working with Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, volunteers and contractors, is beginning the restoration of more than 80 hectares of upland moorland after years of drying peat and habitat loss. The project includes restoring 24 hectares of wet heath, re-wetting deep peat and creating a new area of native woodland on lower slopes. In policy terms, this is the model the department is trying to extend: place-specific projects that combine habitat repair, long-term land management and local delivery partnerships.
The fund sits inside Wild Again: Restoring England’s Wildlife, which Defra describes as its umbrella programme for habitat restoration and species recovery. It follows the department’s separate £90 million commitment in March for threatened species projects, which ministers said was the largest government investment yet announced for species recovery. Officials are also linking the fund to two wider commitments. One is the international pledge to protect 30 per cent of land for nature. The other is the legal target under the Environment Act framework to restore more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat by 2042. Defra also places the scheme alongside the Environmental Improvement Plan, the Land Use Framework and planned legislation intended to strengthen the purposes and powers of National Parks and National Landscapes.
Nature Minister Mary Creagh said the intention is to reverse species decline in protected areas and expand visible habitat features such as flower-rich meadows, native woodland and better conditions for pollinators and birds. The minister also presented the package as part of the government’s largest nature spending settlement to date, although the announcement itself is tightly focused on place-based delivery. External organisations broadly welcomed the approach. Mary-Ann Ochota, chair of the Protected Landscapes Partnership, said a multi-year settlement should help local teams move more quickly and work through trusted local partnerships. The Wildlife Trusts said the funding is needed against a backdrop of climate pressures, pollution and wider land-use change, while the Nature Friendly Farming Network argued that farmers need to be treated as delivery partners if restoration is to happen at scale.
For protected landscape bodies, the practical advantage is certainty. A three-year allocation is easier to plan against than a one-year grant cycle, especially where projects depend on contractor availability, farmer participation and seasonal windows for habitat works. The government also says projects will be prioritised through existing management plans and Local Nature Recovery Strategies, which should reduce the gap between national targets and local delivery decisions. For farmers and land managers, the announcement is designed to reassure as much as to fund. Defra says the scheme does not reduce the farming budget, and it does not replace the existing Farming in Protected Landscapes programme. In plain English, the department is adding a dedicated habitat stream without reopening the wider question of agricultural support.
The significance of the announcement lies less in the headline figure than in the delivery structure behind it. Protected landscapes already have recognised governance arrangements, established partnerships and clear statutory purposes, which gives Defra a defined route for turning national commitments into funded projects on the ground. If the programme performs as intended, the department will be able to show measurable hectares restored in places the public already recognises, while also evidencing progress against Environment Act commitments. Over the 2026-29 period, attention will turn to approvals, land manager participation and whether the local model can deliver at the pace needed to support the government’s aim of halting species decline by 2030 and its 2042 habitat restoration target.