A COMMUNITY-led conservation project is marking three successful years helping nature thrive in the New Forest.

Dedicated bands of nature-lovers are standing up for their local environment by tackling plant invaders, reinvigorating common land and sprucing up woodland.

The Community Wildlife Plans project encourages local communities to record, map and conserve wildlife across the New Forest National Park.

Eight communities have taken part across the Forest, with more than 200 people involved with conserving and monitoring their local green spaces to find out what wildlife lives on their doorstep.

The information collected by the wildlife champions over the past three years has helped to produce Community Wildlife Plans for their parish. These documents bring together knowledge about habitats and species and look at the opportunities for improving wildlife sites locally.

Improvements carried out by volunteers during the project include removing more than 2,000 metres of the invasive Himalayan balsam plant from the banks of the River Blackwater in the north of the New Forest and conducting a national pilot study of its water quality.

The Community Wildlife Plans project was established with European Union funding through New Forest LEADER and supported by a grant from the New Forest National Park Authority’s Sustainable Communities Fund.

Get involved at newforestnpa.gov.uk/cwp.