How you've helped keep Britain beautiful
Did you know that over the past 20 years you've helped plant over 5,000 trees? That you've restored nearly a 1,000 hectares of coastal and floodplain grazing marshes? Or you've repaired over 30 kilometres of stonewalls?
Not only that but you've supported more than 14,000 volunteers and educated over 35,000 students from schools, colleges and universities – all through playing the National Lottery.
The Heritage Lottery Fund – a National Lottery funding distributor – established the ground-breaking Landscape Partnership to support conservation and sustainability schemes across the country, from the chalk and marsh grasslands of the Medway Gap in Kent, to the Lagan Valley Regional Park in Belfast. Through it you've helped generate £128 million in funding, which has gone to support 77 schemes covering over 17,504 km – or the size of Wales, Devon and Cornwall combined.
And, to celebrate the National Lottery's 20 years of changing lives, the Landscape Partnership is investing a further £20 million in nine schemes across England and Scotland, including Tomintoul and Glenlivet in the Highlands, and the forests of Sherwood and Dean.
"With so many habitats and species in decline and people becoming less and less connected to nature and the land, the [Landscape] programme was the first of its kind to allow conservationists to work at a cross-landscape scale," says Drew Bennellick, Heritage Lottery Fund's Head of Landscape and Natural Heritage.
"Involving people as volunteers, training them as guides or helping them learn new skills has enabled local people to appreciate, value and speak up for the countryside. It has also ensured that the UK's most precious resource, our landscape, will be protected for future generations. Thank you, lottery players!"
To find out more about the Landscape Partnership and over 3,100 land and biodiversity projects that have received over £1.2 billion from the Heritage Lottery Fund, visit the Heritage Lottery Fund website
The National Lottery has been changing the lives of winners and supporting good causes across the UK since 1994. In that time, there have been more than 7,400 new millionaires created and by playing The National Lottery you raise over £4 million for Good Causes every dayΔ.
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