Protect London's chalk grassland for rare species

Your support has begun the story of saving vital chalk grassland for biodiversity. Be a part of its next chapter.

Wherever there’s chalk grassland, you can usually find healthy, thriving populations of butterflies and other vital pollinators. Yet since the Second World War, we’ve lost more than 80% of this precious habitat, due to changes in land-use and devaluing of this extraordinary landscape. London’s chalk grassland is desperately in decline, so it urgently needs our help.

We’ve been able to restore precious chalk grassland habitat for rare and diverse species. But if we don’t now maintain the landscape, it will revert to its former poor state, lost for the species that depend on it. Your gift today can restore, protect and maintain London’s vital chalk grassland.

You may already know Hutchinson’s Bank in the Croydon borough. This important chalk grassland site originally passed into the Trust’s management in 1982. In 1995, we introduced grazing animals to create short turf alongside the coarser grasses and scrub. More recently in 2019, thanks to you, we’ve been able to accelerate the restoration of Hutchinson’s Bank and other reserves like Saltbox Hill SSSI and West Kent Golf Course , rewarding the sites with the healthy populations of butterflies and other important species you’ll find there today such as orchids. Now we need your help to protect them.

Without our ongoing care, habitats of this unique quality quickly decline again and turn back to scrub. That would mean a real danger for rare species like small blue or dark green fritillary butterflies, among many others. In a climate emergency, we are more dependent than ever on pollinators like these to sustain our entire ecosystem.

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If you would prefer to support London Wildlife Trust with a regular donation you can become a member.

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Your donation will be unrestricted, so that we can protect London's wildlife as cost-effectively as possible, wherever the need is greatest at the time. 

You can also donate:

• By post - please download and complete our donation form and send a cheque made payable to London Wildlife Trust: London Wildlife Trust, Dean Bradley House, 52 Horseferry Road, London, SW1P 2AF. Please note that this is for the Chalk Grassland Appeal. Please note that there will be a delay in processing postal donations due to the ongoing Covid-19 situation but they will be kept safe in the meantime. 

If you aren't able to print our donation form please send a note with your cheque including your name and contact details and let us know if you would like to Gift Aid your donation, so we can send you a Gift Aid declaration form in the post. Unfortunately we cannot claim Gift Aid from your donation unless you have filled in a Gift Aid declaration form. 

You are welcome to donate anonymously if you wish.

• Alternatively you can donate by phone - call 0207 803 4272 (Monday – Friday, 9.30am – 5.30pm).

Thank you