Make It Wild's story
Motivated by their lifelong love of nature and increasing worry about habitat loss, co-founders and directors Christopher and Helen Neave set out to create a nature reserve in North Yorkshire. As a family, they sought land to acquire and bought 26 acres of rough grazing land outside of York. This land has been transformed into Sylvan Nature Reserve.
The creation of Sylvan Nature Reserve showed the Neave family the beneficial impact that they could have on biodiversity and wildlife, and so they set up 'Make it Wild' to create more nature reserves. Through creating these nature reserves, Make it Wild have planted over 60,000 trees, dug ponds, restored wildflower hay meadows, made 'leaky dams' and placed bird and bat boxes at their multiple nature reserves: Sylvan Nature Reserve, Bank Woods, Dowgill Grange, and Dacre Woodlands. In 2020, Bank Woods was designated a 'Site of Importance for Nature Conservation', thanks to its 70 different species of wildflower; many of which are unique to ancient woodland.
Make it Wild has been set up as a commercial enterprise to allow further development of nature reserves. They now offer various different products, activities and stays:
- An eco-friendly product shop,
- An eco-friendly luxury holiday cottage,
- A barn for eco-friendly mindfulness activities, such as sound baths, forest bathing, walks, yoga and meditation,
- A carbon off-setting tree planting scheme, for their partners to offset against their unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions.
Useful learnings from Make It Wild
Get people together to understand how they can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
Make It Wild's metrics
Carbon emissions absorbed.
Participants in activities.
Trees and other plants planted.
Species observed at Make It Wild sites.
