Oxfordshire's Nature Recovery Strategy shaped by local voices

A huge 'thank you!' to everyone for such strong, positive participation with the draft Oxfordshire Local Nature Recovery Strategy.

The Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) Working Group received 2,143 response during the consultation in October 2024. The LNRS Group comprising of Oxfordshire county, city and district councils, Oxfordshire farmers, National Landscape, Wild Oxfordshire, Oxfordshire Local Nature Partnership, Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust, Forestry Commission, Environment Agency, Natural England and OxLEP. The LNRS Group has now shared a report summarising the consultation responses, produced by their partners at the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery. You can find this report here.

74% of you agreed or strongly agreed that it sets out a helpful set of priorities for Oxfordshire's biodiversity and you also gave us lots of good ideas to build into the final version of the LNRS. Some examples of changes we have already made:

The LNRS Group has now added 25 species to the Species Priorities List, 2 were removed, and they are in discussions with some local experts about others.

They are improving their map to better reflect local knowledge and carefully adding suitable areas to their map to focus nature recovery work.

There are lots of other topics and details that they will be working through; urban biodiversity, the impact of pets and creating guides that help people use the LNRS.

The LNRS Group has made many changes to the draft strategy and will continue to do so until the final version is ready for publication in Autumn 2025.

When the final LNRS is published, the LNRS Group will also publish a version of this report that describes 'What the LNRS did' in response to 'What you said'.