Bid to save Bedford rewilding site that hosts rare nightingales and turtle doves

• Watch a report on Strawberry Hill by ITV News Anglia's Stuart Leithes

A farm left to nature years before "rewilding" rose to prominence has become a unique and important site for wildlife, say conservationists who are launching a bid to save it.

The owner of Strawberry Hill, near Bedford, stopped farming his land 37 years ago, with once-arable fields reverting to scrubland, that is now a haven for a host of wildlife including threatened nightingales, cuckoos and turtle doves.

But the 377-acre site has no official designations or protections, and following the owner's death, there were fears the land could be sold and returned to agriculture.

After gaining a temporary stay of execution for the site, the Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs and Northants (BCN) has raised enough money to buy half the land.

Now the conservation charity is launching a £1.5m appeal to secure the whole site, saving the habitat and its rich wildlife and providing a "unique" opportunity to have a decades-long head start on rewilding the land for nature.

Brian Eversham of Wildlife Trust BCN said: "Many years before anyone had heard of the concept of rewilding, a farmer decided to leave his land to nature.

"What has emerged is a unique area of meadow and shrubland which is ideal for a range of threatened species.

"Creating a reserve like this now would mean buying a large area of farmland and leaving it for more than three decades - but here we have a ready-made habitat full of nature.

"All we have to do is raise the money to save it.

"There is so much potential for wildlife to spread out from this site and recolonise the surrounding countryside - it truly is a beacon of hope in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world."

According to the wildlife team, turtle dove and nightingales are found on the Bedford site in some of the highest concentrations in the country.

There are 32 pairs of nightingales- a species which has declined 90% across the UK, the conservationists said.

The site is also "teeming" with great crested newts, and there are barn owls, cuckoos, pipistrelle and barbastelle bats.

Wildlife Trust BCN's conservation director Matt Jackson said the plan was to leave half the land, where the scrub is more mature, to continue its "natural succession" to woodland.

In the other half, meadow areas will be maintained, which will involve some grazing with animals such as Highland cattle.

Mr Jackson said the site gave conservationists a 37-year head-start to look at how the different approaches - leaving the land to continue to woodland or managing it with some grazing - would change the wildlife and carbon stores.

"It was rewilding ahead of its time," he said.

"It's so important from a wildlife point of view, and that 37-year head-start enables us to see different approaches to managing abandonment and what effect they have on wildlife and carbon. It's a unique opportunity.

"There just isn't anywhere else of this scale that's been left for so long."

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