The Scottish Wildlife Trust has received £110,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to help protect meadows in Fife.
The award is part of a larger £3 million project led by Plantlife that aims to save the UK’s remaining fragments of meadows.
Natural wildflower meadows were once widespread – but sadly across the UK only 2% of the meadows that existed in the 1930s remain. Nearly 7.5 million acres of wildflower meadow have been lost so far and they are still being destroyed.
The Scottish Wildlife Trust will use this award to expand its pioneering grazing scheme – the Flying Flock – which since 2001 has helped protect and restore some of Scotland's most valuable grassland habitats.
The Flying Flock is the Trust’s flock of hardy Shetland sheep moving between grasslands to improve their biodiversity through carefully timed conservation grazing. These rare breeds are versatile and enthusiastic browsers – literally experts in their field.
The Trust's Reserve Manager for East Central Scotland, Rory Sandison, said: “This Heritage Lottery Fund Award of £110,000 will be used to purchase more stock and equipment, enabling the Scottish Wildlife Trust's Flying Flock to help more grassland sites than ever before.
“Sites such as our reserves at Bo'mains Meadow, near Bo'ness and Fleecefaulds Meadow, near Ceres, are once again vibrant grasslands rich in colourful flowers and buzzing with invertebrates thanks to the continued efforts of our sheep and rare-breed Shetland cattle.”