TV ‘Dragon’ Deborah Meaden will be making announcements in South West Railway stations during June.

The investor and environmental campaigner, who stars in ‘Dragon’s Den’, is working with the train operator to support the Save Our Wild Isles campaign.

She will be voicing public address announcements at stations across the network, encouraging passengers to help to create habitats for nature and increase biodiversity.

The voice clips also feature in a series of short films which the Save Our Wild Isles campaign created for businesses, which can be viewed here alongside information on how people can help with tackling the nature and climate crisis.

Save Our Wild Isles is a campaign launched earlier this year by the RSPB, WWF and the National Trust.

It calls for an immediate stop to the destruction of UK nature and urgent action to recover lost nature. It urges companies to commit to plans to become ‘nature positive’, meaning that they will stop and reverse the decline in nature by restoring wildlife and positively benefiting nature.

SWR is the first UK train operator to sign the Nature Positive Business Pledge. SWR serves a very large area across the South West, which contains a wide range of animal and plant species.

The company recently revived a former marshalling yard in Feltham, London, as a home for several species of animals and plants.

Over the last year, it has converted the equivalent of three football pitches into biodiversity gardens with the RSPB, planted fifteen wildflower meadows and introduced over forty homes for insects and birds.

The operator has pledged to map the biodiverse habitats of its network, and to ‘baseline’ its total impact on nature, addressing the full lifecycle of its products. It also plans to create a Nature Positive Framework and Action Plan. The Nature Services team at management, engineering and development consultancy Mott MacDonald will help with this work.

Deborah Meaden commented: “Supporting the Save Our Wild Isles campaign is so important which is why I am pleased to see that South Western Railway is leading the way for rail in supporting nature and responding to the biodiversity crisis by pledging to become Biodiversity Net Positive by 2030 and also the first rail operator in the UK to sign the Nature Positive Business Pledge.”

Amy Dickinson, SWR’s Head of Sustainability, commented: “Save Our Wild Isles is a fantastic campaign and offers simple steps we can all make both at home or at work to help the wildlife on our doorstep. It’s a campaign that SWR is proud to support, as we want our network to be a place where nature can thrive, whether in our stations and depots, by the trackside or in our community gardens.

“We all benefit from biodiversity. That’s why we’ll continue to engage with our colleagues, customers and partners to support the unique habitats across the region we serve. Signing up to the Nature Positive Business Pledge means that our processes will be robust and we can learn together with others who are on a similar journey.”

Julia Baker, Head of Nature Services at Mott MacDonald, commented: “Becoming nature positive starts with an understanding of how a company’s activities (and all activities from office stationery, to transport fleet, to site maintenance) affect nature, and then developing an action plan to address negative impacts and have an overall positive impact on nature.

“Nature positive is a fast-emerging field, and it’s incredibly exciting to work with SWR as it takes a leading position in, not just nature positive, but how becoming nature positive can help to tackle climate change.”

The RSPB, WWF and National Trust commented: “The state of biodiversity in the UK is critical and nature is in crisis with more than 40% of species populations declining since 1970 and the UK in the bottom 10% of countries worldwide for the nature we have left.

“Addressing this urgent issue is one of the defining challenges of our time, and businesses have a crucial role to play in reversing this trend by adopting sustainable practices and supporting conservation efforts.

“It’s heartening to see industry leaders such as SWR committing to becoming nature positive. – only with this kind of action can we hope to save our wild isles.”