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Across the UK, local councils are stepping up to tackle the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate breakdown. Many have already declared a climate emergency, but far fewer have taken the next vital step of formally declaring a nature emergency.

At the Woodland Trust, our Nature Emergency Scorecard asks councils to pass a full-council motion to earn top marks. That’s because a declaration is more than a gesture — it’s a statement of intent that gives nature the political weight it deserves.

When a council declares a nature emergency, it sends a clear signal of leadership and ambition. It elevates nature recovery from a niche concern to a strategic priority across departments — from planning and housing to health and transport. It empowers officers and communities to act with confidence and provides the mandate to make bold decisions, such as reducing pesticide use, protecting trees and embedding biodiversity in local plans.

Declarations also create accountability. They set a clear benchmark that residents, councillors and local groups can use to measure progress.

In this article we take a look at how Nature Emergency declarations are being aligned with the introduction of Local Nature Recovery Strategies in England.

When Dorset Council declared a nature emergency in July 2024 it tied its motion to the completion of its Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS). The declaration made reversing biodiversity loss a core mission, not an optional extra.

Crucially, declarations bring people together. No council can restore nature alone — success depends on farmers, landowners, community groups, businesses and residents working in partnership. Dorset’s LNRS, developed with over 70 local organisations, now has a delivery group involving communities and landowners, showing how a declaration can help turn shared ambition into practical collaboration.

The completion of Local Nature Recovery Strategies is proving a particularly powerful trigger for councils in England to make these commitments. LNRSs provide the evidence base and shared priorities needed to underpin decisive leadership. Harborough District Council, for example, declared a nature emergency in October 2025 on the back of completing its LNRS, following Dorset’s lead in linking strategy with action.

A declaration is not an end in itself — it’s a beginning. Once the crisis is formally recognised, councils can embed nature into all decisions and take tangible steps to restore it: from creating wildlife corridors and supporting nature-friendly farming to investing in green infrastructure and tree planting.

Across England, more councils are joining this growing movement, demonstrating that local government can lead where others hesitate. Declaring a nature emergency is a simple but powerful act — one that shows courage, vision and commitment to a greener, fairer future. And when it follows the completion of an LNRS, it becomes not just a promise, but a plan in action.

We’ll explore how nature recovery is being taken forward elsewhere in the UK in a future blog post.

Above: The launch of Staffordshire Moorlands District Council's Plan for Nature, with representatives from the council, Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, and the local conservation volunteering group, Friends of Cecilly Brook.

Staffordshire Wildlife Trust has worked closely with Staffordshire Moorlands District Council on the development of a Nature Recovery Declaration and a Plan for Nature, an evidence-based strategy for nature recovery that was the first of its kind in the county. Within this strategy the council has committed to a number of targets, including ensuring that by 2030, 30% of all land in the Staffordshire Moorlands will be protected and looked after so that wildlife can thrive there.

In order to meet this ambition, the authority has appointed a biodiversity officer and has invested in ecological expertise from the Trust to input into planning applications. The actions it is taking also include reviewing the management practices of its green spaces to boost biodiversity, and investigating a range of avenues to enable them to meet the 30 x 30 target, including to identify suitable council-owned sites for receiving Biodiversity Net Gain. The council is also a partner in the Trust's Nature in your Neighbourhood project, which is working with communities to improve local green spaces for wildlife.

City of Doncaster Council declared a climate and biodiversity emergency in September 2019. The council committed to putting 'sustainability, biodiversity and carbon reduction at the heart' of its agenda, and noted Doncaster's low woodland and canopy cover compared to regional and national averages in its Environment and Sustainability Strategy.

Goals

Following this declaration, the council has made several pledges to help tackle the biodiversity and nature emergency, including to:

• increase the proportion of land given over to woodland, wood pasture and wildflower grassland.
• become carbon neutral by 2040, including an aim of reducing carbon emissions by 85% by 2030.
• plant one million trees between 2021 and 2031.
• embed 'Tackling Climate Change' as a core priority for the council, with the biodiversity emergency as part of its foundation.

Achievements

In the first five years, over 300,000 trees have been planted and in 2023, Doncaster was named a 'Tree City of the World' by the Arbor Day Foundation and the United Nations. The council was also a recipient of the Woodland Trust's Emergency Tree Fund which has further boosted tree planting across the city.

East Suffolk Council declared a climate emergency in 2019. In 2023, it extended this declaration to include nature, deliberately referencing biodiversity and ecology in the motion too. The council considered this crucial to addressing the 'existential crisis of our time'. Extending the declaration put it on equal footing with tackling greenhouse gas emissions, and was key to fulfilling other ambitions too, like joining the campaign for the Climate and Nature Bill, and requiring 20% biodiversity net gain from developers.

Goals

The council plans to deliver over 100 climate change, sustainability and nature-related workstreams as part of its eight Environmental Impact priorities.

This work includes the challenge of ensuring Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects, like nuclear power station Sizewell C, comply with development plans and have the least possible impact on nature.

Achievements

By 2025, the council had:

• initiated the writing of a tree strategy with a motion.
• secured funding for several self-irrigating bee planters.
• carried out wildflower seed scrapes on verges.
• committed to achieve a 1% uplift in canopy cover with 250,000 new trees.