Badger, Ratty, Mole and Toad strike out for a wilder future

Stars speak up for wildlife in new film trailer hitting cinemas in Sheffield and Rotherham this weekend

Sir David Attenborough, Stephen Fry, Catherine Tate, Alison Steadman and Asim Chaudhry have backed the new campaign from The Wildlife Trusts, including Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust, which calls for a wilder future and for nature’s recovery in the UK. The conservationist and actors have starring roles in a new The Wind in the Willows film trailer which brings to life the 21st century threats facing the much-loved characters from Kenneth Grahame’s children’s classic. The animated trailer calls on everyone to help bring our wildlife back before it’s too late, so that we can all enjoy a wilder future.

The film trailer shows how the lives of Badger, Ratty, Mole and Toad are disrupted by roads, river pollution and intensive agriculture – many habitats have been destroyed and others have been broken up. Toad hangs a picture of a puffin entangled in plastic on the wall in Toad Hall. “Farewell old friend” he says.

Kenneth Grahame wrote The Wind in the Willows just over a hundred years ago. Since then, many of the UK’s wild places and the plants and animals that depend on them have been lost. For example: 97% of lowland meadows and the beautiful wildflowers, insects, mammals and birds that they supported have disappeared; 80% of our beautiful purple heathlands have vanished – with their bilberries, sand lizards and the stunning nocturnal birds, nightjars. Rivers are in deep trouble too: only 20% are considered as healthy and 13% of freshwater and wetland species in Great Britain are threatened with extinction.

Kenneth Grahame’s Ratty – the water vole – is the UK’s most rapidly declining mammal and has been lost from 94% of places where it was once prevalent, and its range is continuing to contract. Toad is also finding that times are very tough: he has lost nearly 70% of his own kind in the last 30 years alone – and much more than that in the last century.

Mike Dilger, wildlife reporter on the BBC’s The One Show and Patron of Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust, said:

“As someone who has now been wildlife obsessed for the best part of 40 years and is determined to continue being a voice for nature, I must admit these are worrying times. The State of the Nature 2016 report makes clear that many of the species and habitats we all adore are patently struggling for space and protection in modern-day Britain.

“Irrespective of how you voted in the European referendum, surely we all agree that new, strong wildlife legislation is essential, which is why I’m backing The Wildlife Trusts’ push for an Environment Act t