heal the land | heal nature | heal ourselves
Our plans
Heal launched in March 2020. Our launch news story is here and coverage in the Guardian is here.
We are responding to the biodiversity emergency. Without action, declines will continue unabated and more than one in ten of the UK’s wildlife species will be threatened with extinction. Nature must be given more space in the UK to thrive again. Ours is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.
Our name is our purpose: heal the land, heal nature, heal ourselves. Heal will raise money to buy land for rewilding in a systematic and strategic way, acting as a focus for individual and corporate involvement in nature recovery.
Heal will mobilise funding from multiple sources to enable us to buy land for rewilding, initially in England. We will look for land with existing buildings so that we can convert them to create accommodation and learning spaces, so that while nature recovers, we can focus on education.
Many people’s link with nature is threadbare. They lack opportunities to connect with it in their day-to-day lives. We want people to come to Heal sites to spend time outdoors and learn about rewilding, wildlife and sustainable living. They will go back to their communities with a determination to create more space for nature and make changes that will help address the biodiversity and climate emergency.
The first changes will be invisible to the human eye, occurring deep in the soil and at the invertebrate level. It may take several years before the land appears to flourish and we see the return of key animal and botanical species. To give wildlife the seclusion it needs, some parts of Heal’s land will remain permanently closed except to staff and volunteers, but the rest will be accessible for visitors to explore and enjoy.
Regenerating vegetation and trees on Heal sites will sequester more and more carbon each year. Our sites will also build ‘natural capital’ resources, including improved water retention and quality, better soil health and nectar and pollen for insects.
Heal will generate revenues from its activities to become self-supporting. Our sites will also generate eco-tourism, creating new jobs and bringing economic benefit to local communities, creating new jobs and bringing money into a locality.
We need to raise around £7m for our foundation project, ‘Heal South’, which will be our first location of around 500 acres in a southern county, within reach of large urban populations. The faster we raise this money, the sooner nature can begin to recover. We will then have a blueprint for successive Heal sites across the UK as funds grow.
As of mid-April 2020, we now have nearly a hundred people donating their time to us as helpers in the 'Help Heal' programme. They all came forward within days of our launch. We've paused the Help Heal programme for now as this response has been so huge.
If you are aged 14-30, we are setting up a network for young rewilders called Heal Future, led by 26-year old Hannah Needham. Hannah is creating the Heal Future Advisory Panel, for which applications have now closed.
For companies, being involved with Heal will be beneficial in multiple ways: good for brand and reputation, good for recruitment, good for employee well-being and mental health through reconnection with nature, and good for sustainability. Read more here.