Access to nature ‘should be a factor’ in payments to England’s landowners

theguardian.com:

The government should factor in access to nature in its new payments strategy for farmers and other landowners in England, a leading land manager has said.

Jake Fiennes, who sits on the board for Natural England’s national nature reserves, has advised the government to incentivise farmers to put better paths in place and educate the public about what they grow, and what nature lives on their land.

Fiennes, the conservation manager for Holkham estate in Norfolk, runs its nature reserve, which includes one of the UK’s most popular beaches. He has estimated the site gets about 1 million visitors a year. He manages the land for the Earl and Countess of Leicester, and it is one of the country’s only privately owned national nature reserves.

The estate is also home to incredibly fragile ecosystems including sand dunes, where rare groundnesting birds including little terns and oystercatchers lay their eggs. Fiennes says he has managed to allow an increase of visitors – and also an increase in breeding success of these birds – with a mixture of education and enforcement, and says this could be a model for the government to adopt.

The government is deciding how to replace post-Brexit farming subsidies. Some landowners have asked to be paid for improving access to their land for the general public, but it is unclear whether the government will adopt this, after pushback from other landowners.

“We will know what has been successful in the landscape scale recovery applications in coming weeks,” Fiennes, the author of a new book on nature-friendly farming called Land Healer, told the Guardian.

“I would love to see [access to nature] in local nature recovery, or an option for farmers to take up this to allow greater access into the