Losing Ground: Call on Government to Protect Our Irreplaceable Meadows - Plantlife
Britain’s historic meadows are living archives of our cultural, farming and natural heritage – every bit as significant as historic buildings or monuments. Yet these irreplaceable habitats are vanishing at an alarming rate, now covering just 0.8% of England’s land in tiny fragments, totaling an area of around half of Cornwall (406 square miles).
Today, on the eve of National Meadows Day (5 July), conservation charity Plantlife is urging the public to demand urgent action to safeguard what remains of irreplaceable meadows —before they are lost forever.
“No one would consider knocking down the Houses of Parliament and rebuilding it elsewhere,” said Nicola Hutchinson, Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Conservation, Plantlife. “Yet nature is being bulldozed by bricks and mortar in today’s political priorities, on the false promise of it being replaced in another location. You cannot recreate decades of ecological richness – these grasslands are irreplaceable – once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.”
Plantlife’s Lugg Meadow nature reserve in Herefordshire – a floodplain meadow recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 – is older than the Houses of Parliament. Home to nationally scarce and vulnerable plant species, including Herefordshire’s Narrow-leaved water-dropwort Oenanthe silaifolia, it is currently under threat from proposed development on neighbouring land.
In England, the UK Government is proposing sweeping changes to planning policy with the Planning and Infrastructure Bill which puts our most beloved habitats and wildlife at risk. Plantlife is calling on Government to protect these meadows by adding priority habitat grasslands to the official list of Irreplaceable Habitats – a designation that currently includes habitats like ancient woodlands and lowland raised bogs – based on age, uniqueness, species diversity and rarity.
The charity argues that meadows which meet this irreplaceability criteria are being overlooked and therefore are more at risk from agricultural intensification, housing and other development.
Posted On: 04/07/2025
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