The Wildlife Trusts’ Habitat Banking Investment Model aims to generate Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) units through the restoration of habitats like grasslands, wetlands, and woodlands across pilot sites in Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, and Cheshire.

This model leverages private finance to acquire and restore land, with BNG units sold to developers seeking to mitigate biodiversity impacts of their projects. Through extensive stakeholder engagement, the project has developed new legal and financial frameworks to enable habitat creation at scale, contributing to nature recovery, flood mitigation, and carbon capture while creating green jobs and fostering restorative economic growth.

This partnership of four Wildlife Trusts and Finance Earth will develop a new Habitat Banking Investment Model to deliver biodiversity net gain at scale. We will create three pilot habitat bank sites in Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, and Cheshire over the next year. The NEIRF funding will enable Finance Earth to design the financial, governance and contracting structure to secure investment in the pilot sites, whilst the Wildlife Trusts undertake site assessments, partnership building, and site pipeline development. Learnings from the pilots will inform the creation of a Surrey Wildlife Trust Natural Capital Investment Company, and design considerations for a countrywide Wildlife Trusts Habitat Banking Investment Facility to accelerate the delivery of Local Nature Recovery Strategies, green job creation and restorative economic growth. Our three pilot sites cover an area of 128 ha and will generate a provisional estimate of 458 biodiversity units over the next 30 years. These sites will be restored to support more ecologically functional landscapes, creating wetlands, scrub, various woodlands and grasslands, which will support priority species such as Curlew, dormice, bittern, and osprey.