COUNTRYSIDE guardians in Eastleigh have vowed to breathe new life into two of Hampshire's most important green havens.

Heathland areas at Hamble Common and West End's Telegraph Woods have been earmarked for a four-year makeover worth thousands of pounds.

Eastleigh Borough Council bosses are to sign up to a Heritage Lottery Fund package of measures that will also guarantee the land remains protected for the next 25 years.

Working with the support of the county council, borough environment chiefs will use £6,956 of lottery money and £7,000 of local conservation cash to manage and restore the heathland.

At Hamble Common - a designated site of special scientific interest - the money will go towards the replacement of worn-out fencing, scrub clearance, bracken control, seeding of heather and the cost of grazing.

Work at Telegraph Woods, a site of importance for nature conservation, will involve clearance of scrub and coniferous trees planted on former heathland, bracken control and fencing to eventually enable grazing for long-term management.

To pocket the lottery cash, the council has to agree to keep the land as heathland for the next 25 years and to allow public access.

That presents the council with few problems, however. Head of countryside services Phil Lomax explained: "These conditions do not place any restrictions on the council's use of the land beyond those which it would impose itself.

"All of these measures the countryside service would have wished to carry out at these sites to enhance the existing heathland but we may not have had the resources to implement."

Hampshire boasts 13 per cent of Europe's lowland heath, which is one of the rarest and most threatened of wildlife habitats.