Ashdown Forest: Winnie the Pooh woodland bids for £750k Defra grant

Landscape recovery manager Mark Infield said "we want to make a positive impact on the landscape"

Ashdown Forest, made famous by Winnie the Pooh and his fictional home 100-Acre-Wood, is to make a bid for government funding.

The Ashdown Forest Trust, alongside 42 other landowners and farmers in East Sussex, is set to apply for a grant from the Landscape Recovery scheme.

The project could see nightingales, turtle doves, pine martens and beavers being restored to the landscape.

The measures will be used to manage the 18,000 acres (7,300 hectares) of land.

Mark Infield, Ashdown Forest's landscape recovery manager, said: "Together with our neighbours including local farmers, landowners, Sussex Wildlife Trust, The Woodland Trust, East Sussex County Council and Southern Water - we want to create a landscape that is bigger, better, and joined up."

He said plans included creating and connecting more thickets and hedgerows, as well as improving areas of woodland, meadows and streams to "enable nature to thrive".

Mark Infield says one of the greatest tools for restoring landscape is using animals to graze it

Winne the Pooh creator A.A. Milne lived in Ashdown Forest in the 1920s, with the heathland said to be the inspiration for the bear's fictional home.

The area was once home to pine martens, beavers, turtle doves, red backed shrikes and nightingales.

The project is designed to promote sustainable farming whilst providing a boost to nature recovery.

Local farmer Nick Attwell, from Nutley, said he joined the scheme because he wants his granddaughter to "experience the joy of nightingales and skylarks, and all these other wonderful creatures".

He said: "I want to be able to play my part in encouraging nature back, to allow her to live in the same sort of world with all the species that perhaps we took for granted, when we were young."

Mr Infield said: "Working with our like-minded partners we want to make a positive impact on the landscape which will reverse practices that have had a negative effect on nature.

"It will take years but once nature is allowed to get back to work, positive changes will follow."

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