Adapting the Levels
A landscape recovery story
November 15, 2025
There is a moment on the Somerset Levels when the land seems to exhale.
Reedbeds ripple in the lightest breeze. Water lies still in the rhynes, mirroring the sky. Curlew calls drift across open fields, soft and lingering. It is a landscape defined by water, shaped by centuries of human care, and now facing pressures that reach far beyond its boundaries.
Adapting the Levels is an attempt to understand those pressures and work with the land, not against it.
A collaboration supported by Somerset Wildlife Trust, Natural England, the Environment Agency and DEFRA, the project sits at the heart of one of the Government’s first Landscape Recovery initiatives. The work here is patient and practical, grounded in the belief that nature, community and farming are inseparable parts of the same place.
Joan Edwards of The Wildlife Trusts captures the purpose with clarity: “Sustainable food systems are underpinned by a healthy environment and thriving wildlife.” The Levels are a living example of this connection. The project seeks to strengthen it.
A Landscape Under Strain
The Somerset Levels are shaped by peat, water and sky. The soils hold the remnants of millennia. The fields carry the marks of generations of farmers. This is a place that floods, drains and settles in cycles that have always required careful balance.
Climate change is altering that balance. Wetter winters, hotter summers and shifting seasons increase the strain on both farming and nature. Peat soils dry and shrink, releasing carbon. Waterways become stressed. The wildlife that depends on damp grasslands, meadows and wetland mosaics loses ground.
Adapting the Levels was created to address these growing pressures. The project area covers more than 5,000 hectares within the River Brue catchment, stretching between Burnham-on-Sea and Glastonbury. Fifteen landowners have joined the project so far, contributing just over 1,000 hectares of land. Most of the work will take place within these boundaries, though the project looks outward too, inviting the wider community to help shape what comes next.
The Somerset Levels have always depended on the health of their habitats.
Working With the Land
The project explores how adaptation can emerge from the land itself. It looks at rewetting peat to lock carbon back into the soil. It restores weakened habitats so they can support more species. It studies how water can move more gently through the landscape. It searches for ways to ease the economic uncertainty that climate change brings to rural areas.
The approach is rooted in collaboration. Farmers, conservationists, hydrologists and ecologists sit around the same table. Their knowledge overlaps with the lived experience of people who walk these fields, maintain the ditches, manage livestock and listen to the changing seasons. No part of the landscape is treated as separate from the others.
Five areas guide the work: Collaboration, Restoring Habitats, Rewetting Peat, Green Finance and Heritage. These strands do not run in parallel. They weave through the project, shaping decisions on land use, farming practice and environmental management.
Restoring What Has Been Lost
The Levels have always depended on the health of their habitats. Wet grasslands hold water through the winter and release it slowly. Flower-rich meadows support insects, birds and pollinators. Scrubby margins offer cover to species that move between land and water. But many of these habitats have thinned or retreated.
Restoration here is gentle rather than abrupt. Margins are widened. Ditches are managed for life, not just drainage. Grasslands are allowed more time to grow before cutting. Woodland edges are reconnected. Each change creates more space for plants and animals to return.
Recovery is often quiet, almost unseen. A field begins to hold water a little longer. Wading birds return to shallow pools. Reed warblers nest in stands that were once too sparse. These are small signs, yet they add up to a landscape regaining its strength.
Holding the Peat in Place
Peat lies at the heart of the Levels. When wet, it is a powerful store of carbon and a foundation for wetland habitats. When dry, it breaks down quickly, releasing carbon into the atmosphere and causing the ground to sink.
Rewetting peat is one of the project’s most important tasks. It involves adjusting water levels to keep soils damp for longer periods of the year. It means working closely with farmers so that changes support both nature and livelihoods. It is a delicate process, but it brings long-term benefits to the land and the people who depend on it.
The project also explores new financial models that reward landowners for environmental stewardship. Green finance is not a replacement for farming. Instead, it adds value to the essential work farmers already do. It recognises that restoring wetlands, improving water quality and conserving peat are public goods that contribute to climate resilience. This is especially important in Somerset, where many families have farmed the same land for generations. Their decisions shape the land as much as rainfall and tide. Green finance aims to support stability so that communities can continue to thrive while adapting to new realities.
The Community’s Voice
People living within the project area are essential to its success. Their experiences, concerns and aspirations help guide decisions. Community involvement is not an additional layer; it is the framework that holds the whole project together.
Workshops, discussions and shared mapping sessions invite residents to express how they see the landscape changing and how they hope to see it shaped in future. This local insight helps identify which areas could be restored, which need greater protection and which can support new forms of land management.
For the farming community, this collaboration builds trust. Adaptation plans do not arrive as fixed prescriptions. They grow from conversations, practical trials and shared understanding.
A Landscape Ready to Change
Adapting the Levels is one of the first projects of its kind in England. Its purpose is not only to protect this part of Somerset, but to demonstrate how nature-led recovery can work at scale. As the project progresses, it will deliver a suite of options for climate adaptation, economic resilience and landscape restoration.
The work will take time. It requires seasons to pass, water to settle, peat to regenerate and communities to guide the path forward. Yet the foundations are strong. Collaboration is in place. The land is responding. The people who live here are helping to shape a future that holds space for nature, farming and community life.
When the sun sets over the Levels and the light touches the water, it becomes clear why this landscape matters. It is not only the place itself, but the way people choose to care for it. That choice is what gives the project its purpose.
From the Auria Foundation
At Auria, we believe that conservation is not only about protection—it’s about presence. Adapting the Levels shows us what becomes possible when people choose to care for our environment.
Through our membership model, 50% of all subscription funds go directly to high-impact causes like this. By supporting Auria, you support the return of the rare.
If this story resonates with you, you’re already part of it. But if you’d like to step closer—to help this quiet species echo across Britain’s skies once more—you are warmly invited.
Join us. Be part of what returns.
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