Wildlife Trust project puts nature at the heart of Chesterfield's neighbourhoods - Derbyshire Wildlife Trust
Street by street, a bold new project is laying the foundations for a wilder, healthier Chesterfield, where nature and people can flourish side by side.
Derbyshire Wildlife Trust’s Wilding Chesterfield project has received £245,000 in support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to aid nature’s recovery in the town’s urban spaces and make it a priority for the people who live there.
The latest State of Nature Report, released by the Trust in June, lays bare the reality that many of Derbyshire’s landscapes are fragmented, degraded, and struggling to support wildlife.
With urban wildlife under increasing pressure, the Wilding Chesterfield pilot project aims to turn the town’s streets into homes for the species that were once thriving there, such as hedgehogs, bats, swifts, and the Big Five pollinators: flies, wasps, bees, butterflies and moths.
Thanks to National Lottery players, the project will focus on identifying the state of urban wildlife, restoring existing species and their habitats, and growing resilient populations, through community-led action across the town.
Wilding Chesterfield will offer a vibrant programme of community events and workshops, empowering local residents with knowledge and tools to create wildlife-friendly neighbourhoods.
From creating hedgehog highways so they can move safely through gardens and installing swift boxes to replace dwindling nesting sites, to providing bat boxes to support these vital nocturnal pollinators and recommending pollinator-friendly plants for gardens and shared green spaces, Chesterfield is about to get wilder.
Posted On: 21/07/2025
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