WILTSHIRE Wildlife Trust is calling on the government to tackle the climate emergency and nature crisis at global climate conference COP26.

The trust is one of several across the country backing a report which urges for more to be done to cut carbon emissions and offers potential nature-based solutions.

It explains how climate change is driving nature’s decline while the loss of wildlife and habitats is leaving us ill-equipped to reduce emissions and adapt to a changing world.

Next month's conference in Glasgow will bring business and climate experts from around the world together to hash out a plan to tackle climate change before irreversible damage is caused to the planet.

The Wildlife Trust's chief executive Craig Bennett said: “Net zero needs nature. Nature needs net zero. Both need to be resilient to the climate of the future.

"Nature’s fantastic ability to trap carbon safely and provide other important benefits is proven – peatland, woodland, saltmarsh and other wild habitats are vital carbon stores.

"But these natural places are in decline and face even greater risk of degradation from the extreme climatic conditions that are already inevitable over the next 30 years. It’s becoming a vicious spiral of damage – one that has to be stopped right now.

“In addition to the urgent task of cutting emissions at source, we need to see an enormous rise in the amount of land and sea that’s protected for nature – and increase it to at least 30 peer cent by 2030.

"The government must embed climate action – mitigation and adaptation – across every department and take urgent steps to stop carbon-emitting activities such as new road building, peat burning and trawling the seabed.”

The wildlife trusts are calling on the government to ban bottom-trawling seabeds in England, boost sustainable farming which locks carbon into the soil, increase peatland restoration and the natural regeneration of woods, and make more space for nature in towns and new developments.

The trusts have a list of things people can do about climate change online, ranging from choices about the food we eat, the way we travel and how to stop homes overheating.