We’re here to ask – and answer – some vital questions:
🌱 How can communities help reverse nature decline?
🌿 How can the capital needed for nature recovery be unlocked?
🌳 How can communities and nature best replenish one another?
Woodland Savers was founded in 2022 by Franny Armstrong, Tamsin Allen and Adam Wishart to meet these challenges. Building on a career in social entrepreneurship, I was hired to help create an organisation fit for the task, now joined by the brilliant Tessa Bartlett. We are HIRING: follow us on LinkedIn or contact us for more information.
On 8 February 2024 we completed a £.7m 🌱seed funding round, led by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, supported by Bates Wells, after a research and development phase funded by the Forestry Commission and the Frederick Mulder Foundation.
Our approach is to help communities to acquire local woodlands and other cherished natural landscapes, and take them into active, long-term, nature-positive management. We do this in collaboration with national wildlife charities including The Woodland Trust and The Wildlife Trusts, natural capital data partners Treeconomy and rePLANET, values-aligned co-investors and philanthropists. We create a new communitybusiness in each case, and support the longterm stewardship and protection of local nature, socialvalue and economic resilience, balancing local characteristics with national expertise.
We are now looking for PROJECTS across the UK. Do you know of a community looking for help to buy their local woodland? They might be worried that a landscape they love and depend on may fall into remote or commercial-first ownership, threatening access, neglect or nature-negative use of the land. We can help them crowdfund and match-fund, and deliver a nature-first landscape management plan. Find us at woodlandsavers.org (new website coming soon…), contact us at hello@woodlandsavers.org, or on socials @woodlandsavers.
Our thanks go to the skill, commitment, and collegiate spirit of our advisors, supporters, and friends: Richard Tyrie and Joss Hunt at Good People, Simon Milton Jamie Anley and Maria O’Connor Ph.D. at MovingBeyond.co.uk, Jonny Page and John Fairbairn, Frederick Mulder, Carman Family Foundation, Michael Norton, Holly Turner and Louise Hosking, Jess Search 💛🚀 and Beadie Finzi at DOC SOCIETY, EDUARDO CUBRIA, Barnaby Wiener, Alasdair Maclay, Jenny Edwards CBE FFP, Nick Gardner, Kathy Willis, Emily Gowers, Gavin Starks, Steve Cole, Anthropy UK, Plunkett UK, Erica Neve FRSA and Sir Tim Smit at Eden Project.
Here’s to bringing community power 💛 and nature finance 🚀 to the all-important challenge of nature recovery 🐝
