Photo credit: Ben Crowther

The Defra-funded Ock and Thame Farmers Landscape Recovery project is the most strategically significant project that RTCT has been involved with to date, affording opportunities to shape the delivery of land management in the Thame and Ock catchments for many years to come.

The project is a joint initiative with our Catchment Partnership co-hosts, Freshwater Habitats Trust, and farmers from Ock and Thame farm clusters. It’s one of only 34 such projects in the country that were allocated funding in the Round 2 pilot for Landscape Recovery, which is the upper tier of land management stewardship options being rolled out by Defra as part of its post-EU Common Agricultural Policy, Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS). It is exciting, and a big responsibility, to be charged with such an important piece of work. However, we have a wealth of knowledge and skills within the Ock and Thame partnership, as well as top-level expertise we’re able to bring in from external organisations such as the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, the Rivers Trust, and Floodplain Meadows Partnership.  We are also able to tap into the collective knowledge of the organisations involved in Round 1 of the scheme, especially our close friends and neighbours the North East Cotswolds Farmer Cluster with the Evenlode Landscape Recovery project.

The area of land being used for the project covers some 8,500 ha of farmland, with over 90 landowners and other partners involved. Initially, we have two years of funding to design farm and landscape-scale strategies and plans, attract investors, and explore the variety of market and legal mechanisms needed to enable high-integrity private investment that will complement public funds. The project seeks to identify and secure new funding mechanisms which could buy ecosystem services from farm businesses, such as storing carbon and water, enhancing biodiversity and water quality, and providing health and well-being opportunities, whilst farms continue to provide sustainable good food. The objective is that at the end of the two-year project development phase, we’ll have a clear idea of environmentally positive changes that can be implemented and will work in terms of farming and the environment. We’ll have a clearer picture of who the investors are and will be well-progressed in securing income which will flow from beneficiaries to farmers, to support the implementation of these plans for the next 20 years, if not more.

It’s rewarding and challenging to be part of a dedicated team working on such a forward-looking project. With a lot of behind-the-scenes work required before any difference will be visible on the ground, and even longer before changes to environmental markers will register, it helps to look at the small differences we’ve already made in the landscape. To consider the small environmental, farm business, and community benefits they’ve delivered, then extrapolate this across a multiplicity of sites strategically networked across the landscape, benefiting people and the planet alike. All the benefits may not be realised in my lifetime, but it’s good to be a part of the first small steps towards what we hope will help to restore nature, with all the benefits that can bring, in what a team of researchers from the Natural History Museum of London identified in 2020 as "one of the most nature-depleted countries in Europe".

Hilary Phillips

Project Manager (Thame) Defra Landscape Recovery Project

Hilary@riverthame.org

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