The Kent Biodiversity Strategy 2020-2040 is a plan that aims to protect and recover threatened species through habitat maintenance, restoration and creation. The strategy specifically addresses the need to ‘climate proof’ nature, and how nature in a good condition can act as a carbon store. The strategy also sets ambitions to help local communities access the health and wellbeing benefits created by nature.

The strategy was written by the Kent Nature Partnership, a collection of organisations working to safeguard Kent’s biodiversity. Kent County Council hosts and manages the Partnership. The strategy was published and adopted by the county council in 2020; it sits alongside the council’s 2021 Plan Bee pollinator action plan and the council’s commitment to plant 1.5 million trees – one for every Kent resident.

The Kent landscape is hugely varied and supports 20,000 species (nearly 30% of the UK total). 3,400 of these species are rare and threatened, including the Lizard Orchid, Shrill Carder Bee and Black-veined Moth.

Kent is also home to 98 Sites of Scientific Interest, 2 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and 5 out of the UK’s 7 rarest bumblebee species. Kent’s rich habitats include vegetated shingle at Dungeness, the chalk grasslands of the Kent Downs, and numerous marine habitats – the most diverse of any coastal waters in Europe.

This variety means Kent, nicknamed the Garden of England, is host to species unique to the county. Protecting the Kent ecosystem is of local and national importance. The biodiversity strategy aims to deliver net biodiversity gain (leaving nature in a better state than before) over 25 years. It has four central aims:

1. Rich and growing terrestrial biodiversity, underpinned by resilient and coherent ecological networks and healthy, well-functioning ecosystems.
2. Clean, plentiful and biologically diverse freshwater and intertidal ecosystems underpinned by implementation of a catchment-based approach.
3. Contribute to reversing the loss of marine biodiversity and delivering clean, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas through good management.
4. Connect people with the natural environment so that the widest possible range of ages and backgrounds will be benefitting from the mental and physical health benefits of the natural environment; and the next generation are inspired to take on guardianship of the county’s biodiversity.