The last two years have been filled with uncertainty and upheaval but for many organisations, as has been the case for many individuals, it’s also been a time to reflect and refocus time and energy.

As a Trust, whilst getting on with managing a hugely challenging situation and continuing to deliver for nature and people, we have also taken time to think about what it is that we’re here to do and most importantly, why.

Our work over the past 60 years has protected and enhanced some of the most important places for nature in our county, we have created new spaces for nature, and have developed an unparalleled knowledge of the wildlife and wild places in Nottinghamshire. We are firmly rooted in, supported by and accountable to the local communities of which we are a part.

However, the scale of the ecological and climate crises means we must now take a more radical and urgent approach. If we are going to make a difference for nature and climate in this critical decade, we need to involve and inspire many more people to act locally for nature’s recovery.

Our new Wilder Nottinghamshire 2030 strategy is our response to the urgent need to tackle the twin threats of ecological collapse and climate change - the most important challenges of our time.

We must continue to protect the fragments of wildlife rich habitat that we have left, these nature reserves and other wildlife rich places are the foundation of nature’s recovery.

We must also continue to fight to achieve change in the wider social and political arena, but go further than ever before to achieve substantial landscape-scale recovery of wildlife and ecosystems.

It’s not just wildlife that is in trouble; people are too. Across Nottinghamshire, mental health problems, obesity and loneliness are major issues. The social and economic cost of our failure to deal with these issues is huge and growing. Society is losing its connection with the natural world and many people living in the most socially and economically deprived areas of our county have least access to wildlife and wild places.

We know, however, that restoring nature and enabling access and action for it can help solve many of these pressing economic and social problems.

Across our county, thousands of people are taking action for wildlife at home, work, school or on their land, all of these actions make a difference. But the challenges facing nature are vast, so we are all going to have to think bigger, think bolder and take more action individually and together to have the impact that’s needed.

The science suggests that we need 1 in 4 people taking action. In the decade to 2030, we must therefore get many more people (a mass movement) taking action for nature at all levels, and create much more space for wildlife to thrive, for its own sake, to improve health and wellbeing and to help us tackle the climate emergency.

We will help to make this happen by supporting and empowering individuals, local communities and businesses to become the agents of change. The recovery of nature mustn’t be something that is done to people; it must be done by people - inclusive, welcoming, diverse, growing communities of people, if it’s going to happen at the scale and pace required and if it’s going to endure; a ‘People Powered Nature Recovery’ is what’s required.

We can bring nature back, but we need to do much more, and faster. The UK is one of the most nature depleted countries on the planet. We have lost so much wildlife and our natural systems are degraded. Runaway climate change is dangerously close to becoming a reality. Our rivers are polluted and full of plastic. Our soils are washing away and our air isn’t clean.

Nature has been squeezed out by the increasing pressures of development, infrastructure and damaging land management practices, often fuelled by human consumption. What wildlife remains is often found isolated in nature reserves. Many of us have never known a time when birds, insects and mammals were everywhere, or experienced a wildflower meadow in full glory. Over time, with each generation, we have got used to this being normal. It is not.

We know that over the next decade must deliver a seismic shift in our collective behaviours to reverse the spiralling loss of nature and prevent catastrophic ecological and climate breakdown. What we do now will affect us, and every generation to come.

People are part of nature, and own health and wellbeing depends on a healthy environment. We want our wildlife back, we can fix this by working together, we know what needs doing, and everyone has a role to play.

I hope you, your family, friends and neighbours will become part of the people powered recovery of nature and you can start today by sending a clear message to government that their proposed targets for improvements to our environment and recovery of nature are totally unacceptable.

The legally binding targets currently being consulted on are supposed to underpin the Environment Act, that we and so many others fought long and hard for, are shockingly under ambitious.

The Government wants to ‘halt the decline in our wildlife populations through a legally binding target for species abundance by 2030 with a requirement to increase species populations by 10% by 2042’. Over the very decade we know we must see transformative progress, Government is effectively saying that its acceptable to allow wildlife populations to continue to decline.

In practice, the 10% improvement they are proposing means that in 20 years’ time, nature will be in the same state it is now or likely worse.

Can you imagine the reaction if any Government were to publicly state a commitment to ensuring that hospital waiting times will be no shorter in 2042 as they are today; or that they were working to ensure that levels of child poverty are no better in two decades’ time? There would rightly be public outrage.

Without ambitious targets it will be difficult to deliver the speed of progress needed to put nature into recovery. The investment needed to ensure we can all have a wilder future will be difficult to secure and organisations such as The Wildlife Trusts will struggle to bring businesses and other partners onside to tackle the climate and nature crisis.

With our new strategy, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust has restated its commitment to nature’s recovery, but our ambitions mustn’t be undermined by a weakened Environment Act – so let’s make a start on our People Powered Nature Recovery by sending a clear message to Government that must up its game – starting with suitably ambitious targets for species abundance in the Environment Act.