Flora is flourishing outside our nature reserves

It is widely known that nature in rural areas has been greatly impoverished over the past decades, leading to many small and scattered nature areas that have each become isolated. At the same time, those same rural areas harbour a fine-meshed network of infrastructure such as roads, dikes and storage basins. With the right kind of management, these ‘ribbons’ running through the man-made landscape can actually fulfil an important function for many plants and animals – as places of residence, shelter and connection.