The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has announced grants totalling £21m to conserve nine distinctive landscapes.
This investment will ensure a boost for rural areas and provide long-term social, economic and environmental benefits.
The landscapes are:
- Coigach and Assynt, a beautiful and remote part of North West Scotland
- The New Forest, extensive ancient woodland and heathland with a strong surrounding community
- Humberhead Levels spanning Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, a rare internationally important wetland landscape characterised by significant remains of medieval strip farming and famous for its peatlands
- Ingleborough Dales, a limestone landscape in the Craven district of the Yorkshire Dales National Park
- North York Moors, home of the pioneering ironstone industry and the early development of railways
- Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland, the largest fresh water lake in the British Isles
- Rusland Valley and Fells, in the South Lake District National Park with a strong link to the traditional coppicing industry
- Derwent Valley, a coalfield area in North East England left behind by deindustrialisation which aims to harness the potential of its heritage for positive change and tourism
- East Wight, the eastern tip of the Isle of Wight and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
"HLF’s landscape-scale funding has helped forge strong local partnerships which have secured the future of some of our most threatened landscapes," said Drew Bennellick, head of landscape and natural heritage at HLF
"The nine schemes we are supporting this year have all demonstrated a need for urgent conservation work to the natural and built heritage as well as reconnecting communities to these places.
"They are important on many levels, including being an integral part of our health and well-being and a significant contributor to the tourist economy.
"The UK’s amazing countryside is under ever-increasing pressure and we must act now to make sure it continues to be one of our greatest assets."
Comments