Restoration and rewilding are approaches which restore degraded or lost natural ecosystems and are offering opportunities to sustainably integrate productive human landscapes with native functioning ecosystems. Land managers who embark on restoration or rewilding projects will be able to tap into growing environmental income streams and contribute to securing the future of their assets.

Human contributions to climate change and biodiversity loss are threatening our ecosystem services. There is a growing imperative, which is being reflected in evolving environmental policy and income opportunities, to mitigate this decline and move from an extractive land use model to a regenerative one.

Restoration and rewilding are part of a spectrum of land management approaches which are necessary to tackle the multi-faceted problems of food security, job security, biodiversity decline and climate collapse.

Ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged or destroyed, and often involves schemes like native woodland creation and peatland restoration. It can also address the remediation of chemical pollution such as acid mine drainage and physical disturbance such as that on post-mining sites.

In the UK, rewilding is bridging the gap between agriculture and ecological restoration and is fast evolving into an innovative approach to sustainable farming where our landscapes may function again as self-regulating, provisioning ecosystems. The principals of rewilding include restoring ecosystem processes, like naturalistic grazing by large herbivores, and putting missing cogs back into the ecological engine, for example ecosystem engineers such as beavers (when feasible).

Restoration and rewilding can be worked effectively into a rural business strategy to improve the quality, value and longevity of rural assets. This is achieved by diversifying assets, meeting the increasing market demand for sustainable products, and by protecting and fortifying the ecosystems and climate.

How can savills help

• Advice and consultancy
• Scoping and feasibility studies
• Project design
• Project management
• Ongoing site management