Nature Recovery Fund - Match Appeal

Nature Recovery Fund - Match Appeal

£29,326 of £100,000 goal
6 days remaining
Logo for the Nature Recovery Fund, a BBOWT fundraising appeal

Match Fund Appeal

18 - 25 March 2025

For one week only, we are asking for your help to raise £100,000 in support of BBOWT's Nature Recovery Fund.

Generous donors have pledged to match up to £50,000 to help vital conservation work, including restoring and protecting our precious waterways.

DOUBLE your impact

Please adjust the value below to your chosen gift amount
£

Bring back nature and restore our rivers

Each year, our Nature Recovery Fund highlights areas of work that support our vision of ‘more nature everywhere, for everyone’ by 2030. This year, we are shining a spotlight on one of our most threatened habitat - rivers. They need us to work harder to protect and restore them, and we need them.

Our waterways are the arteries of life, supporting us and our amazing wildlife from kingfishers and herons to sticklebacks and pike, otters and water voles. These waterways should be clean, flourishing with life and protected from harm. But, this is not what we’re seeing. Now is the time to act.
Lily O'Neill
Community Networking Officer
River Itchen, with aquatic plants reflected in the surface. England: Hampshire, Ovington, May

Linda Pitkin/2020VISION

From the majestic River Thames, winding its way through Chimney Meadows, to the rare chalk streams and babbling brooks that flow through BBOWT reserves, our work to restore them is vital. We need to act now!

Help bring back nature

Please adjust the value below to your chosen gift amount
£

Here are some examples of what we could do with your generous gift:

  • Support campaigning work to achieve better protection of chalk streams. Only 11 of out of the 220 British chalk streams have any legal protection.
  • Support restoration work along stretches of waterways like the Letcombe Brook, which runs through Letcombe Valley nature reserve.
  • Support monitoring work of vital waterways, like our long-running water vole project.
  • Create more opportunities to volunteer, inspiring people to act for nature and to grow the impact of all of our conservation work across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.
Golden-ringed dragonfly

£25

£25 could help fund work to create better habitat for dragonflies and other wetland wildlife
White-letter hairstreak

£80

£80 could help purchase disease-resistant elm trees so white-letter hairstreak butterflies can thrive
Nightingale (c) Chris Gomersall/2020VISION

£160

£160 could help provide training for more volunteers to manage scrub for nightingales

ONE gift, DOUBLE the impact

If you’re considering giving to a good cause, this is the week to do so. Up to £50,000 of contributions to the Nature Recovery Fund will be matched to a total of £100,000! Your generosity will help to turn the tide so that we see our landscapes flowing with life once again, now and for future generations.

Match my gift

Please adjust the value below to your chosen gift amount
£

FAQs

How can I give to the appeal?

A big ‘thank you’ from everyone at BBOWT for choosing to support us! There are various ways you can give and the totaliser will be updated daily to include offline donations.

Card or PayPal online
Please click on any of the links or buttons displayed above. You will be directed to a form where you can enter and change the amount that you would like to give.

Card by phone
Please call 01865 788300 between 9am and 5pm Monday – Friday.

Cheque/CAF voucher by post
Please send your gift to us at Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust, The Lodge, 1 Armstrong Road, Littlemore, Oxford OX4 4XT.

SMS text*
Text RECOVERY followed by your donation amount to 70480 to give that amount.

*Texts will cost the donation amount plus one standard network rate message, and you’ll be opting into hearing more from us. If you would like to donate but don't wish to hear more from us, please text RECOVERYNOINFO instead.

How much do you need to raise?

The Nature Recovery Fund, our largest-ever fundraising campaign, has a target of £3 million. It’s an ambitious target – we are asking businesses and grant-givers to support the fund too – but this vital income boost is needed to fast-track our work to create more nature everywhere, for everyone.

The match fund appeal runs for one week only and must end on Tuesday 25 March. Please give now to double your gift. If we reach our target of £100,000, any additional donations will not be matched but will still count to the Nature Recovery Fund total.

Why is this appeal needed now?

We need to be bigger, bolder and wilder to restore nature at scale across our three counties. Our expert staff and volunteers are raring to go, but they need your help - urgently.

Scientists across the world agree that this decade is the last chance we have to address the greatest environmental challenge the world has ever seen. Globally and nationally, wild animals and plants are in steep decline and Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire are sadly no exception.

We rely on nature for everything – the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink - and it supports our health, happiness and even our economy. Yet for too long nature has been destroyed through unsustainable, inappropriate development and intensive agriculture. This must change.

If we’re going to reach our target of 30% of our three counties well managed for wildlife by 2030 we must act now.

Our vision to reach 30% of land rich in wildlife and inspire 1 in 4 people to act for nature is bold, but it’s critical we achieve this by 2030 or it will be too late.