c) Greg Hitchcock
Lock up Carbon with Kent Wildlife Trust
Offset your Carbon with Kent Wildlife Trust
You can offset your carbon with Kent Wildlife Trust today, at the same time supporting our work restoring crucial habitats for wildlife across the County. All donations go towards our Climate and Nature Emergency Fund, and can help create natural solutions to the Climate and Nature Emergency, such as restoring high value chalk grassland, or bringing the beaver back to our waterways.
The average person in the U.K has a yearly carbon footprint of 6.5 Tons, and travelling 10,000 miles in an average petrol car creates 2.9 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. You can offset your carbon with Kent Wildlife Trust, supporting local action against the Climate and Nature Emergency.
Every donation of £40 can help us to capture and store 1 ton of carbon across our estate.
c) Barry cook
Offset your carbon with Kent Wildlife Trust
By offsetting your carbon you can see local action against climate change, and contribute to Kent's Climate and Nature Emergency Fund.
Every £40 you donate to Kent Wildlife Trust will help us store 1 ton of carbon across our estate
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£260 could allow us to lock up equivalent of the average persons yearly carbon footprint
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£120 would lock up the carbon created in driving 10,000 miles in an average petrol car
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£134 could offset the average households yearly electricity and gas consumption
Support our critical Chalk Grassland, and lock up carbon in Kent
Your donation will be spent here in Kent, and will help us to take direct, local action against the climate crisis.
Chalk grassland is Europes version of the rainforest, with up to 40 flowering species found in every square metre, and it also locks up carbon for us.
Soil contains more carbon than all the Earth's plants and atmosphere combined, mainly in the soils beneath grasslands, which cover around 30% of our planet.
Kent Wildlife Trust has restored over 150 acres of chalk grassland in the last 5 years. You can help support this habitat, which stores crucial carbon in its soils.
Offset your carbon Footprint with Kent Wildlife Trust
Donate £120...
...to offset the equivalent of 10,000 miles emissions from a petrol car
donate £12 now....
to offset 1000 kwh of electricity- the average house uses 4000kwh a year
donate £53 now...
...to offset 7000 miles flown- roughly the equivalant of flying from London to New York and backFind our more about Chalk Grassland
Kent is the most important place in the world for Chalk Grassland. Most of our chalk grassland has been lost since the 1940's, and buying and restoring new Chalk Grassland has been a priority for Kent Wildlife Trust
It is seen as Europes version of the rainforest, with up to 40 flowering plants found in every square metre. It hosts some of our rarest orchids and butterflies
Crucially it also stores carbon in the soil, and can help us in the fight against the climate and nature crisis.
Why is Chalk Grassland so important?
Chalk grassland is one of the richest habitats of Western Europe, containing a great diversity of plants and animals. It is now very rare and fragmented, and is of international conservation importance. Kent holds 5% of the UK resource and the UK holds 50% of the world’s surviving chalk grassland resource.
Up until the Second World War, traditional grazing practices ensured that grasslands were grazed at a low intensity, wildlife-friendly manner, resulting in habitats which were botanically very diverse – as many as 40 plant species per square metre could build up in the vegetation (or sward, as it is sometimes referred to) over many years or even decades. From the 1940s onwards, more efficient farming techniques such as better drainage and chemical inputs, together with farming subsidies, all contributed to change the way our grasslands were used: many areas were either ‘improved’, ploughed up for crops, or left un-grazed and gradually taken over by scrub and woodland. Other areas were lost to development, quarrying, road construction and tree planting.
Lydden Temple Ewell Reserve
Kent Wildlife Trust's work on chalk grassland
In the last 6 years, thanks to the generosity of our donors, Kent Widllife Trust has purchased and restored over 150 acres of chalk grassland in the Dover area. This has helped to transform the area, creating new habitat for chalk grassland species to thrive on. Our latest appeal has raised almost £80,000 to restore Coombe Down, adding a further 19 acres of Chalk Grassland.
This additional chalk grassland also locks up around 220 tons of Carbon dioxide every year
c) Blueprint film
Chalk Grassland Species
Chalk grassland supports a number of rare plants and animals, many of which have unique associations with this habitat and cannot thrive, or survive, elsewhere. The fragmentation of many areas of grassland has resulted in populations of a number of species being isolated and prone to local extinctions. Wildflower species include betony, bird’s-foot trefoil, many types of orchid, ox-eye daisy, Other species associated with chalk include juniper, now only found in a few sites in Kent.
Ground-nesting birds such as skylarks and meadow pipits will use this habitat unless it is too heavily grazed or the site is dominated by trees and tall scrub.Reptiles such as adder and viviparous lizard are frequently found in this habitat and like to bask on the open, warm ground (areas with short vegetation and patches of bare ground warm up faster than taller grassland areas).
Many species of invertebrate lay their eggs on certain species of grass or wildflower: for example, the caterpillars of the chalkhill blue and Adonis blue butterflies only feed on horseshoe vetch, itself only found on chalk grassland. Solitary bees and wasps make use of the bare chalk to create burrows and lay their eggs.
Chalk Grassland and Carbon capture
Our Chalk Grassland can play a crucial role in locking up carbon in it's soils. Every hectare of Chalk grassland helps to lock up the equivalent of 3.7 tons of CO2 every year. This is why it is so important to continue to manage our existing chalk grassland, as well as look to purchase and restore new land when it becomes available.
Soils contain more carbon than all vegetation on earth and the atmosphere combined, and research in the UK has shown that Grasslands soils
have the highest carbon stock of any UK broad habitat.
By restoring grasslands, we can help mitigate the causes of climate change by directly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, safeguarding carbon stores
and in some cases re-starting sequestration of Carbon. The sustainable management of habitats important for carbon storage therefore contributes to meeting targets for emission reductions, including the carbon budgets set by the UK Climate Change Act.
We can only do this with your support; help us capture carbon in our chalk grassland sites today by supporting our climate and nature emergency fund.