An Essex estate has launched a 200-acre nature-recovery project after seeing how a smaller area of land recovered when it was left untouched for a decade. The project at Braxted Park Estate covers about 70 hectares across the administrative areas of Colchester City Council, Braintree District Council and Maldon District Council. It builds on a land management decision made decades ago. About 30 years ago, the Clark family decided to set aside their entire farm. After ten years in the Countryside Stewardship scheme, farming resumed in 2014. But the family chose to leave about 50 acres unfarmed. Over the next decade, scrub grew back and self-seeded oak trees matured. The area then attracted rare birds, including turtle doves and nightingales. Duncan Clark DL, owner of Braxted Park Estate and creator of the Braxted Park Habitat Bank, said seeing the natural recovery across those 50 acres persuaded him to expand the work over a much larger area. "The opportunity to increase the acreage of nature recovery to 200 acres of BNG was one Duncan could not turn away from," according to the estate’s official publication detailing the project history. The larger 200-acre project is an off-site Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) habitat bank. Under current UK planning rules, property developers must ensure that new projects deliver at least a 10 per cent increase in local biodiversity. If ecological improvements cannot be made directly on a building site, developers can buy biodiversity units from outside habitat banks to meet the legal requirement.
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