THE Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is targeting Wiltshire as a possible future location to tackle declines in species and climate change.

The conservation charity has said that protecting wildlife under pressure in fragmented “islands” of habitat was not enough to reverse losses and cope with rising temperature, as it identified Wiltshire as home for one of dozens of landscape-wide conservation projects.

Instead of just creating more and bigger reserves “isolated and tucked away behind fences”, space needs to be made for nature throughout the wider countryside, according to Aidan Lonergan, manager of the RSPB’s “futurescapes” programme.

So the RSPB has teamed up with other conservation groups, businesses, local authorities and communities in more than 30 large-scale areas from North Wales Moors to the Humberhead Levels to protect wildlife and provide green spaces across the British countryside.

The RSPB’s new approach to conservation involves developing more than 30 futurescapes, with Wiltshire’s chalk grasslands one of the targets.

More than three-quarters of England’s wildlife-rich chalk grassland was lost in the past 100 years and half of what remains, 44,000 acres, is in Wiltshire.

The Wiltshire Chalk Country Project aims to recreate the largest network of chalk grassland sites in north west Europe, linking up Salisbury Plain, Porton Down and Stonehenge World Heritage Site.

The RSPB said it was working with farmers and landowners to create new chalk grassland under Natural England’s environmental stewardship scheme, in a bid to support wildlife such as the Adonis blue butterfly and birds including stone curlews and corn bunting.

Protecting and extending chalk grassland will also help improve water quality because it involves no use of fertilisers, reducing run-off, the RSPB said.

Mr Lonergan said that the world has failed to meet targets to halt wildlife losses and nature was now facing the increasing threat of climate change.

He said temperatures were rising at a rate for which the world had no comparison and which could force bird species north by hundreds of miles, while the UK’s network of protected sites which were developed over the past 30 or 40 years became more and more isolated.

“They have become little islands of nature while the wider landscape has become more impoverished and intensively managed,” he said.

The RSPB will continue to buy and manage nature reserves and work with key species such as red kites, cirl bunting and corncrakes to bring them back from the brink of extinction, he said.

But he said: “Nature reserves are just one element of what needs to be done. They’re important but need to be backed up by improvements in the wider countryside.

“What we are trying to do with futurescapes is create more space for nature.

He said the UK was a “crowded island” and there was a need to find ways to manage land to protect wildlife alongside delivering benefits such as food production, space for recreation, water management and carbon storage.

“We’re looking for opportunities in the wider landscape to work with partners to provide green space. Green space is good for the economy, it's good for people and its good for nature.”