WildEast Announces New Partnership

●    WildEast and Land App are working together to harness technology to foster nature recovery across the WildEast region    
●    New toolkit will help landowners transform hedges into habitats for wildlife
●    Why these ‘Wild Edges’ could be a key solution for nature recovery on a wider scale
●    How everyone can get involved - no matter their size of land

WildEast is launching a partnership with Land App, a cloud-based mapping platform designed to empower those in the land management sector to make more sustainable decisions.

Working together, WildEast and Land App will equip farmers with the toolkit that they need in order to transform their farmland hedges into rich wildlife habitat. 80% of the WildEast footprint is agricultural land. WildEast and LandApp aim to enable landowners to broaden hedges to increase space for wildlife. Broad bushy hedges, or WildEdges, can become substantial ecological assets whilst increasing crop productivity for the farmer. WildEast estimate that 5% (62,500 hectares) of the 20% of wildlife habitat required could come from WildEdges.

WildEast is one of the UK’s most ambitious nature recovery movements. Initiated by three East Anglian farmers in 2020, WildEast's aim is to return 250,000 hectares of the region back to nature over 50 years, creating one of Europe’s biggest and best nature reserves. This is being done through the pledging by individuals and businesses of up to 20%* of their land or whatever they have towards nature recovery.

Excitingly, WildEast is firmly on track with its long term mission. Illustrating how beauty and biodiversity can be found in surprising places, 1000+ pledges of land have already been added to its Map of Dreams, created with EastPointGeo, including farms, schools, industrial estates, railways stations, churchyards and private gardens across East Anglia.

Whilst creating space for Wildilfe at scale is crucial to the WildEast mission, it is also about democratising nature recovery and encouraging a commitment of any size. WildEast encourages pledges from window boxes, backyards, schoolyards, churchyards and farm yards. Creating wildlife friendly habitats is crucial. Large swathes of land or even the smallest gardens can be transformed into a nature reserve.

CALLS TO ACTION
How to pledge a WildEdge

With the click of a button, Land App users will be able to automatically generate a digital Land Management Plan (LMP) base on their existing habitat features using a Single Business Identifier (SBI number). Equipped with accurate data layers from multiple research and Governmental bodies, users will be able to ‘go wild’ on the platform, selecting which areas would best suit the WildEdge pledge scheme. Alongside the Land App’s collaboration tools, this partnership aims to both create conversations between farmers and land managers and catalyse action towards nature recovery. https://thelandapp.com/

All other pledges are logged on the WildEast Map of Dreams to mark the collective effort, demonstrate success and incentivise others. The Map of Dreams 2.0 has been created by EastPoint Geo. It not only shows the range of multi-sector land pledges to WildEast, but also the Future Landscape Vision. This is a forward-thinking view of how to achieve the 20%.

Specifically the WildEast Map of Dreams 2.0 will allow a wide range of organisations to pledge land including community projects and groups, map different types of habitat at a more granular detail, improve connectivity by identifying target connectivity, highlight areas that are making significant progress and increased connectivity (also those that are not making progress), show where we can work closely with existing project (such as DEFRA pilots and Nature Recovery Networks) for those in planning and not yet on the ground and most importantly show that everyone has a role to play in nature recovery from window box to large farms and nature reserves.

Those without land to pledge can still support the initiative with a financial contribution or through volunteering time and expertise. WildEast welcomes more pledgees in the region to come and help make a difference.

➢   Visit www.wildeast.co.uk & the Map of Dreams & sign up to the newsletter
➢   Follow on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook @wildeastuk #MyWildEast
➢   Make a pledge

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Monday, May 9, 2022