Rewilding Futures: Shaping Tomorrow's Wild

I have worked for the National Trust since 2012 as senior ecologist on the Purbeck Estate, leading the Trust’s work to build nature recovery partnerships in South Dorset and instrumental in setting up the UKs first ‘super-NNR’ in the Purbeck Heaths in 2020. I sit on the NNR steering group and lead its research and monitoring group.
Having begun my career managing small nature reserves in Derbyshire, I later spent 10 years as an ecologist in Galicia, Spain. This re-set my understanding of nature conservation and emphasised the need to think at scale and work with natural processes to create more complex, wilder and more dynamic landscapes.
In my career I have learned that if we are to restore nature we need to stop thinking about nature reserves and start restoring functional ecosystems across whole landscapes. That means working with the people who live there to reimagine our relationship with the land. and rebuild nature-based local economies that sustain resilient, connected communities .