FOLLOWING a successful three-year pilot scheme in the West Midlands and East Anglia, new habitats for declining farmland birds and plants are to be created on arable farms.

Farmers throughout England will be able to apply for payments for creating wildlife areas around their arable fields and extra amounts for sowing wildlife seed mixtures.

Species found to have benefited from the pilot scheme include declining farmland bird species such as the lapwing, reed bunting, greenfinch, jackdaw, starling, pipits, wagtails and thrushes.

A number of rare arable plant species were observed to have returned together with an increased population of bumblebees.

Plans for the inclusion of the new arable options in the Countryside Stewardship Scheme are being sent for approval to the European Commission later this month and farmers will be able to apply for the scheme from next January.

The money to finance the new options will come from the budget for the scheme which will increase from £51 million to £126 million over the next six years.

Under the England Rural Development Programme, £1.6 billion will be available to farmers over the nnext seven years for environmental protection and improvement and rural development.