About Us
Heal is the UK's first registered charity dedicated to rewilding landownership, to give everyone - individuals and businesses - a way to take urgent, practical action on the biodiversity and climate crises.
Many people don't realise that the UK is one of the most nature-depleted nations in the world. England, the country in which Heal is active, ranked 234th for the state of its nature amongst all countries and territories, near the bottom of global rankings. Urgent action is needed now to restore habitats and species to better levels of diversity and abundance.
For nature to recover, it needs new places where it can thrive. Heal is raising money to create a rewilding site in every county in England, to support nature recovery, climate change action and human wellbeing. We have a core emphasis on diversity, inclusion and accessibility, particularly young people and those from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Heal's mission is to heal the land, heal nature and heal ourselves through creating new spaces where nature can recover.
Heal's goal is to create a series of rewilding sites across England at mid-scale - 48 sites of around 500 acres/200 hectares. These will combine land and existing buildings that can be converted to create educational spaces and accommodation for visitors. Because rewilding is an amazing way to restore biodiversity, we are looking for degraded, wildlife-poor land.
We are on track to acquire our foundation site by the end of 2022. We have secured lending from Direct Line Group and Triodos, the sustainable bank. Anyone can become involved in directly supporting rewilding land by sponsoring a 3m by 3m square within our site which will have its own unique what3words address.
On the ecologically depleted land we acquire, meaning land with very low biodiversity, we will reinstate natural processes by returning native ecosystem engineers to the land.
When ecosystems begin functioning better on our areas of rewilded land, we'll have biodiversity hot-spots with healthy soil and booming invertebrate populations that can help kick-start nature's recovery on surrounding sites in the landscape.
We plan to have cattle, ponies and pigs as our 'ecosystem engineers', acting as proxies for extinct or absent wild species. These won't be 'farmed' animals and they will be introduced to sites once the natural food supply is sufficient to support appropriate numbers of them.
Grazing, browsing and rootling by these animals, along with any wild deer present, construct a mosaic of habitats by 'working' the land in different ways. These actions naturally control the growth of dominant species such as tree saplings. Without grazing, habitats are vulnerable to succession, meaning a gradual shift towards total tree cover.
Press releases
Rewilding community gathers in Brighton as government view unclear on...
With the new government yet to give specifics on its environment and climate policies, over 60 people interested in rewilding, climate and... read more
07.10.2022 • By Heal Rewilding
