WILDLIFE campaigners will be pulling out all the stops this week to convince the Government to think before cutting Dorset’s conservation funding ahead of an official spending review.

Groups, including the Dorset Wildlife Trust and the RSPB, say that funding cuts of up to 40 per cent at the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) could have a ‘devastating impact’ on the countryside.

At the moment it is estimated that half a penny in every pound the Government spends is spent on DEFRA.

Campaigners for the RSPB will be taking to the streets of Weymouth and Dorchester until Wednesday to get their message across.

Flags bearing the RSPB slogan ‘Don’t cut the life from our countryside,’ will be pulled behind bicycles in the town centres from 9am to 5pm.

Placards and posters have also been put up in fields, at road junctions and at the Radipole Lake and Lodmoor RSPB sites.

West Dorset MP Oliver Letwin will be out campaigning with the RSPB. He will be part of the coalition government’s cabinet that will decide where the axe should fall on department spending.

Government funding has already seen work done on Weymouth’s nature reserves ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games, including the new sand martin wall at Radipole Lake and improvements to the water ways.

RSPB reserves manager Nick Tomlinson said: “Weymouth Wetlands is part of the green heart and lungs of this area.

“The reserve’s importance to the county’s wildlife as well as its residents and visitors, cannot be underestimated, and this would not have been possible without the sort of funding that is now at risk.”

Conservation groups are worried that without the government grant scheme to encourage wildlife-friendly management, areas of already threatened habitat, such as wildflower meadows, and endangered farmland bird species, such as the corn-bunting, lapwing and yellowhammer, will be put at risk.

Director of Conservation at Dorset Wildlife Trust, Imogen Davenport, believes that cuts could affect biodiversity conservation.

She said: “The Government has a crucial role in protecting and enhancing our most precious wildlife sites and species and it is essential that this is maintained.”

She added: “Recent economic studies show that the costs of not conserving biodiversity now will be multiplied many times over for future generations to pay.

“We urge the Government to think very carefully about where cuts should fall, and not to sacrifice future quality of life for short-term false economies.”