Our story
Our organisation originated as a “passion project” for our founders, Christopher and Helen, and their children, who wanted to give nature a boost. The first site was such a success that they realised they could do even more for nature by partnering with businesses, and hence Make It Wild was born.
We have been creating nature reserves here in the UK since 2010 and we are now caring for more than 600 acres over 12 sites. Our objective is to provide habitat for our native plants and animals and that includes establishing wildflower meadows, digging ponds and restoring wetlands. As well as preserving ancient woodland, we have also planted over 80,000 trees in new woodlands, and it is the carbon that these trees absorb that we can offer to companies looking to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
All our decisions are biodiversity-led – nature has a seat at our board meetings. Many of our other clients enjoy the fact that they are able to visit our nature reserves, either for team conservation days, or to utilise our spaces in nature, including a conference room above our barn.
Our advice
One of the key learnings is that nature is resilient and will absolutely bounce back if we give it the opportunity to do so. Some bits are quicker than expected, others take much longer. If someone else was considering doing something similar, we would certainly recommend taking advice from ecologists on what the land currently has to offer, and how to enhance that. Tree planting plays an important role in nature restoration, but so do many other crucial habitats – ponds, wildflower meadows, wetland, etc. We have had huge help from individuals in the local area who wanted to give their time to helping us with our work, their input has been so valuable.
Our metrics
We regularly invite ecologists with different specialities to carry out species surveys, so that we can identify what is working well.
The new plantations that we have established so far will sequester in the region of 7,500 tonnes CO2e per year, but we’re not close to finished!
