A campaign is begins next month to buy land to help restore an ancient chalk grassland.

Kent Wildlife Trust wants it for access to the 220-acre Lydden Temple Ewell National Nature Reserve.

It is trying to raise £40,000 by the summer to buy a five-acre field to make the site’s management easier.

The long-term cost is expected to be £300,000.

A spokesman said: “This rare landscape is visited by more than 50,000 people a year.

“Unless the land receives continual care this old chalk grassland is in danger of being lost forever.

“Chalk grassland is rare- 2.5% of the UK’s old chalk grassland survives in the Dover area.”

The campaign will be launched in January and will continue until June.

The public will be consulted through a series of roadshows plus meeting with parish councils and local groups.

The reserve is north-west of Temple Ewell and south-east of Lydden and between London Road and the A2.

It is one of the premier ancient semi-natural chalk grasslands in Britain with an abundance of fragile and threatened plants and animals.

Once the purchase is secured fencing will be renewed, a water supply will be set up and work will be done to remove scrub and invasive vegetation.

In the following growing season it is hoped that chalk flowers will appear such as wild thyme and basil thyme.

It is hoped to also encourage the return of ground nesting birds such as skylarks and grey partridges.

Both are on the RSPB’s Red List, which is the highest conservation priority.

Kent Wildlife Trust is the largest independent conservation charity in Kent and has generated and invested about £2.5 in the Dover area in the last five years.

For further details visit the website kentwildlifetrust.org.uk.