A NATIONAL park authority which has seen its government grant dwindle to just 42 per cent of its income has unveiled a plan to focus its efforts and resources on mitigating the impacts of climate change, increasing biodiversity and improving the nation’s health and well-being.

The North York Moors National Park Authority’s chairman, Jim Bailey, described its £10.3m budget for the coming financial year as “a triumph of perseverance and dexterity” due to the authority’s ability to find match funding and lever in money to undertake a spectrum of initiatives.

A report to a meeting of the authority’s finance committee on Monday states the proposed budget would be balanced without the requirement of reserves

“due to considerable work being undertaken alongside the new business

plan”.

For the first time the national park authority’s budget is aligned to the objectives of a business plan which focuses on three key objectives of responding to climate change, nature recovery and the physical and mental health benefits that the park could bring people.

The move follows a University of York study in 2018 finding for every £1 the Government invested in the national park authority there were about £7 of health and wellbeing benefits.

Mr Bailey said while the park authority had previously paid close attention to its second purpose of promoting the park to many potential visitors alongside numerous landscape-driven programmes, the forthcoming business plan would “concentrate on fewer things and do them well”.

He said the pandemic had led to being close to nature going up in many people’s list of priorities.

Mr Bailey said: “Going forward it’s not just about visitors, it’s about the value the park can give to them. That’s why we are looking to focus on health and wellbeing rather than tourism or visitors.

“What we’ve realised is getting meaningful chances to engage and help people’s health and wellbeing is more important than having 1,000 cars going across Saltergate Bank.

“Over time it might well be that certain types of visit are more important than others. We can’t just endlessly have more and more cars and impact, so we’re going to have to try and increase the value and that’s going to be part of mitigating climate change and nature recovery.”

Mr Bailey said species such as turtle doves and salmon could be among the species to benefit from efforts to increase biodiversity.

He said: “I’m not convinced our nature is in bad shape, but it seems the public mood at the moment and the people we consult are happy that we should be doing for nature. Clearly there are some species and habitats that are not in the best shape and identifying and improving them is what the national park’s job is.

“What I’d like to do is have a look at the habitats that we have and ask if the flora and fauna is what you would expect given the climate conditions, and if there are some that are missing asking why is that. It’s not just blindly having two of everything like Noah’s Ark, but if there are indigenous species that are not there we should try and return them.”