5 April 2012 Last updated at 03:28 ET

Lottery cash for North Berwick Law meadow habitat

Millions of hectares of meadow have been lost since over the past few decades

A fragile habitat in East Lothian is to benefit from Heritage Lottery funding.

The grassland and wild flowers found in the North Berwick Law Reserve are a key part of conservation charity Plantlife's Saving Our Magnificent Meadow campaign.

The project, which includes a total of nine sites across the UK, aims to safeguard and restore new areas of meadow habitat.

It has received £145,000 of development funding from the lottery.

Mark Reay, from Plantlife, said: "The UK's wildflower meadows and grasslands are facing a very uncertain future so a partnership of conservation organisations has come together to do something about it.

"Many older and middle-aged people have vivid memories of walking through beautiful wildflower meadows filled with butterflies and birdsong when they were young, but this is not an experience that the vast majority of younger people have had and that is a very sad state of affairs."

Plantlife will be working in partnership with Scottish Natural Heritage at the North Berwick Law Reserve.

The charity said that, since the 1930s, 98% of the UK's meadows and grasslands had disappeared, causing a sharp decline in the plant and animal species that call them home.

More than three million hectares of meadow have been lost, mostly due to a great change in the management of land for food production during and in the decades after World War II.

The lottery funding means the East Lothian meadows will be one of nine targeted areas where local people will be encouraged to get involved in conservation.