A TV PRESENTER and conservationist has added her voice to a campaign to halt development on the Gwent Levels.

Lizzie Daly is backing Gwent Wildlife Trust’s campaign to obtain full protection for the Gwent Levels. 

The charity has launched a Senedd petition calling for a halt to significant development on the wetlands until full formal protection is in place.

Ms Daly is well-known to viewers of BBC One’s The One Show, where she has appeared many times, speaking on subjects as diverse as Welsh sharks, palmate newts and puffins.

Other credits include BBC Two’s Winterwatch and Blue Planet LIVE Lessons.

Joining TV naturalist, Iolo Williams in support of the campaign, she said: “Protecting the Gwent Levels, a special wetland that is home to hundreds of threatened species is in everyone’s interest, not just as wildlife lovers or walkers who enjoy this area, but as a nation and as a society.

"We are at a turning point in recognising the escalating nature emergency and stepping up action to protect our biodiversity.

"This rich environment acts as an important carbon store, while also providing a home for a soup of life including the charismatic water vole, the Eurasian crane and the king diving beetle.

"This is our chance to act and protect this wonderful landscape. Let's make the right decision for the protection of the Gwent Levels.”

Magor Marsh reserve, which campaigners say is directly threatened by the Magor Solar Farm proposal, is one of the last remaining pieces of natural fenland that once covered the Levels.

Wetlands like this were once commonplace across Britain, but are now one of the UK’s most threatened habitats.

Gwent Wildlife Trust chief executive Adam Taylor, said: “The Gwent Levels are an ancient landscape, rich in culture and important for biodiversity, recreation, flood alleviation, carbon storage and food production. They are now facing multiple, adjacent, enormous solar proposals, and business parks as well as other development projects.

"The Welsh planning system in its present form is unable to control such development, and the destruction which these would cause under present arrangements would mean the end of this beautiful, fragile and complex wetland."

To view the petition to help protect the Levels - head to petitions.senedd.wales/petitions/245508