This post is by Guy Shrubsole. Image: the Lulworth Ranges in Dorset, on a long lease from the Weld Estate to the Ministry of Defence.

Back in March, the Government announced it was forming a new ‘National Estate for Nature’ group – bringing together some of the largest landowners in the country to do more to restore nature. Launching the group’s first meeting, Environment Secretary Steve Reed stated: “Landowners must go further and faster to restore our natural world. The National Estate for Nature, who manage a tenth of the land in this country, have a responsibility to future generations to leave the environment in a better state.”

I warmly welcomed this announcement – it echoes calls for a ‘Public Nature Estate’ made by the Wildlife and Countryside Link coalition, which I wrote about in my book The Lie of the Land. By bringing together large public, private and third sector landowners, the National Estate for Nature (NEN) has the potential to accelerate nature restoration efforts in several ways:

1. By sharing good work already being done by members – whether public, private or third sector – and driving a ‘race to the top’ for nature recovery.
2. By better coordinating nature recovery on public sector land – currently spread across several landowning departments and arm’s-length bodies, from the Ministry of Defence and Forestry Commission to Natural England and the Environment Agency. A recent parliamentary question by Alex Sobel MP reveals that this is now underway with DEFRA working on a ‘Cross-Government Nature Strategy’.
3. By challenging private sector landowners to do do more for nature restoration. DEFRA states that landowners on the National Estate for Nature are being “asked to draft new land management plans to help meet the country’s legal Environment Act targets.” This goes above and beyond existing environmental obligations, such as landowners having to protect Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) on their land – and starts to ground the national-level targets in the Environment Act in specific deliverables by particular landowners. It edges us towards a social contract whereby large landowners are made more publicly accountable for how they manage a finite resource.

The creation of the NEN is an ongoing process, rather than a single event – it is set to hold quarterly meetings, so should meet again in the near future. So below I set out some thoughts on how the NEN could maximise its effectiveness as it develops. But first, who are the landowners comprising the National Estate for Nature (NEN), and what land do they own?

Mapping the National Estate for Nature

A list of members has been published by the Government here. But I decided to go one better, and map their landholdings. Here’s the resulting map I made:

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (INSPIRE polygons)

And here’s a table listing what I reckon to be the area of land owned by each member of the National Estate for Nature:

Type of landowner	National Estate for Nature member	Freehold land in England (acres)	Freehold land in England (hectares)
Public sector	Environment Agency	834	338
	Forestry Commission	489,814	198,225
	Natural England	50,075	20,265
	MOD	397,098	160,703
	MoJ	11,578	4,686
	National Highways	114,314	46,262
	Network Rail	100,525	40,682
	MHCLG / Homes England	24,512	9,920
	DESNZ	10,891	4,408
	DfE	807	327
	Cabinet Office	166	67
Establishment	Church Commissioners	105,000	42,493
	Crown Estate	264,233	106,934
	Duchy of Cornwall	130,639	52,869
	Duchy of Lancaster	41,610	16,839
Aristocratic	Elveden Estate	22,500	9,106
	Clinton Devon Estates	25,000	10,117
Water companies	United Utilities	140,124	56,707
	Yorkshire Water	68,927	27,894
Conservation NGOs	National Trust	474,641	192,085
	RSPB	127,032	51,409
	Wildlife Trusts [NB: multiple orgs]	243,400	98,503
	Canal and River Trust	Unknown	Unknown
	TOTAL	2,842,886	1,150,500
	Percentage of England	8.9%
	Public sector bodies only	1,200,614
	Percentage of England	4%

A note on the data. The data displayed in my map and table above is both incomplete and likely out-of-date. As you can see, I’ve no info on what the Canal & River Trust owns, and the Wildlife Trusts haven’t yet published a map of the land belonging to their 46 county trusts (but I’m in contact with their central GIS team and they’re working on one!). Even obtaining reliable data on public sector landholdings is still a struggle. The Forestry Commission regularly publishes maps of what it owns, but I’ve had to rely on FOI requests to get maps from the MOD, National Highways and Network Rail (and these are probably now out of date). Figures for the land owned by the other government departments comes from me trawling through the Cabinet Office’s Government Property Finder dataset, which is at least meant to be updated regularly, but I’m pretty sure it mainly lists built properties rather than wider landholdings.

What should the National Estate for Nature do next?

1. For starters, it should produce a better map of what land its members own. There are signs that the Government is finally getting its act together on this front. As Nature Minister Mary Creagh recently told Alex Sobel MP, DEFRA’s Cross-Government Nature Strategy is developing a “geospatial natural capital register for the government estate”, and is considering publishing it on the government’s MAGIC map website. This would mean having to map all government-owned land, and assess what habitats this contains. Hopefully the department is being assisted in this endeavour by HM Land Registry – who were recently instructed by Housing Minister Matt Pennycook to open up their data, a very welcome process that’s still playing out. It’s essential the Government gets its own house in order on this front, so that it can reasonably expect the same of private and third sector landowners who it’s brought to the table. It’d be pretty embarrassing otherwise…

2. Members of the NEN should map the habitats and protected sites they possess. A lot of this can be done very simply by using existing datasets (SSSI boundaries, Priority Habitats Inventory data etc). But this is also a golden opportunity for major landowners to assist in improving the quality of datasets on what habitats exist. Ecologists have complained bitterly for years that Natural England’s Priority Habitats Inventory (PHI) for grasslands is woefully incomplete – meaning we risk losing some of our last remaining wildflower meadows through sheer ignorance of what remains. The landowners who sit on the NEN should task estate managers and ecologists to survey their landholdings, particularly for species-rich grasslands missing from the PHI.

3. It should identify opportunities for better collaboration between NEN members. Armed with maps of what they own and what habitats they possess, NEN landowners can see better where synergies might exist: neighbouring estates, for example, could collaborate to create wildlife corridors or set up Landscape Recovery projects. Going by my own map above, we can see that there are several promising ‘clusters’ where NEN members own a lot of land next door to one another: the Norfolk Brecks (Elveden Estate, Forestry Commission, MOD, Crown Estate); the northern Peak District (United Utilities, Yorkshire Water, National Trust); and the Lakes (National Trust, United Utilities, Forestry Commission), amongst other places. Perhaps there’s already great collaboration between landowners in these areas, but what more might be done? Or are there areas where a rare habitat exists in isolation – a fragment of wildflower-rich chalk downland owned by Natural England, for example – which could be expanded if only a neighbouring landowner was brought into the NEN?

4. In producing “new land management plans”, NEN members should be expected to detail what they are doing on their landholdings to help meet Environment Act targets, 30×30, carbon budgets, and help deliver the forthcoming Land Use Framework. One of the problems that’s beset nature and land use policy in England is its essentially voluntarist character. Governments set national targets to recover species and habitats, but these high-level goals have yet to really filter down to those best placed to deliver them – such as the country’s largest landowners. What would it look like to really push to meet 30×30 in England – to have an actual spatial delivery plan, backed by key landowners, coordinating between one another and holding one another to account? The National Estate for Nature is the place to try it.

5. Create a ratchet mechanism for ramping up delivery. The genius of the Paris Climate Agreement is that it contains a ‘ratchet mechanism’: an obligation that each nation’s plan for reducing emissions is more ambitious than the last. Ambition has to ratchet up with each successive Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC. (This ratchet in itself was modelled on the 5-yearly carbon budgets contained in the UK’s Climate Change Act.) We need a similar ratchet mechanism to speed up nature recovery. Where better to try that than through the National Estate for Nature? NEN members should be obliged to deliver regular plans for nature recovery on their landholdings, and then come back with more ambitious plans at the next round of reporting. Is England on track to meet 30×30 in 2025? No, then come back with more ambitious plans. How about in 2026? Still not on course? Right, more ambition needed. And to help increase the pressure on members…

6. Mandate publication of all NEN members’ plans and maps of their estates. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and transparency will greatly help drive progress towards nature recovery – because then the public and civil society groups can see what’s going on and apply pressure. Think of it as a league table for nature: who’s leading, who’s lagging behind. Church Commissioners not doing much to steward creation? Join a campaign to demand they do better. National Trust doing really well in delivering their nature recovery plans? They can bask in the glow of being at the top of the league. There are plenty of precedents for public reporting of this kind, from the ‘Whole Estate Plans’ published by large landowners in the South Downs National Park, to the Dartmoor Landscape Vision recently unveiled by the Duchy of Cornwall and its tenant farmers.

7. Bring more landowners into the National Estate for Nature. Whilst the current membership is a good spread of some of the largest public, private and third sector landowners in England, there’s also some notable absences. What about some of the biggest landowning local authorities, like Brighton Council (who own a 10,000-acre downland estate, vital for the restoration of chalk grassland), or Sheffield City Council, who own a chunk of the Peak District? And whilst it’s great to have two large aristocratic estates represented on the NEN – the Earl of Iveagh’s Elveden Estate and Baron Clinton’s Clinton Devon Estate – it begs the question, where are all the others? After all, Britain’s dukes own a million acres between them. Why isn’t the Duke of Northumberland’s 100,000-acre estate involved, bringing with it vast swathes of degraded moorland and marginal farmland? What about the Duke of Devonshire, and his vast 30,000-acre grouse moor at Bolton Abbey (recently appraised by Natural England to be in declining condition)? Ministers should grab a copy of Debretts, and pick up the phone: duty calls.