Summary
Disappointed by that ever-elusive wall of private funding, many smaller farms are struggling to get the funding they need to make the changes they want. Carbon schemes, Biodiversity Net Gain and agri-environment funding are spread too thinly or only accessible to larger landowners able to feed the scale-hungry private sector.
In place of complex, slow-moving and often contentious private funding schemes, Protect Earth works quickly and collaboratively with small landowners and local communities and businesses to make change happen in months, not years.
Land App is essential to Protect Earth’s work. It gives them the ability to rapidly understand an area and then collaboratively plan appropriate habitats with landowners and locals to create an area the whole community supports. Crucially, Land App then enables the Protect Earth team to draw in funding from a range of sources, including grassroots funds from the community and local businesses alongside public grants.
At a tenth of the price of similar tools, Land App is the only cost-effective tool that works for innovative, action-focused, fast-moving, collaborative businesses like Protect Earth.
We caught up with Phil Sturgeon from Protect Earth to understand how they do it and how Land App gives them access to essential tools that would otherwise be unaffordable.
Protect Earth’s restoration work
Protect Earth has projects across 70 sites in the UK, including a 70-acre Ancient Woodland in Cornwall, a 70-acre over-grazed hillside in Wales and the Warleigh Valley Nature Reserve that they created in Bath.
Their work encompasses tree and hedgerow planting, alongside creating and restoring habitats such as wildflower meadows, wetlands and native woodlands. From planting saplings to clearing invasive species, Protect Earth’s work focuses on what is best for the local context.
Land App enables Protect Earth to rapidly access information about new sites. For instance, crucial insights about current habitats, land management, water flows, and the presence of features such as land drains allows the team to scope out ideal land use changes for the local context.
Tree guards at project site © Protect Earth
From planning to boots on the ground as quickly as possible
Doing the best thing for the local context isn’t just about which habitat to restore and which trees to plant. It’s also about understanding what the ideal arrangement is for the local community.
This starts with the landowner. Protect Earth adapts their collaboration with landowners through leasing agreements, grant sharing and collaborative management to create solutions that work for the current landowner.
Next they involve the local community and businesses. Phil and the team run workshops with the community to get their preferences on how the land should be used. This idea of shared value is a big part of why communities and businesses are a key source of grassroots funding for the projects. They’re changes people really want for their local area.
Teaching heritage skills © Protect Earth
Locals are also a key part of establishing the habitats. As Phil put it,
“We’re fighting biodiversity loss and climate change issues and whenever we own the land, we add people to the third part of that. We teach a bunch of heritage skills from hedge laying and coppicing, to making biochar out of invasives that we cut down.”
Ensuring the local community can continue to access the nature they’ve restored is also key:
“We add people to the mix along with access and permissive footpaths and that sort of thing so people can get back in touch with nature.”
As evidence grows about the mental and physical health benefits of access to high-quality natural sites, this is becoming increasingly important and can help to lower strain on local health services.
Local community engagement © Protect Earth
How Land App enables fast and collaborative planning
Restoring an area in a way that works for everyone involved means plans need to be clear and accessible. Easy editing is also crucial for Protect Earth to efficiently map changes that suit the landowner and community. Before Land App, the options didn’t suit these requirements. Platforms like Google Earth provided an easy-to-use mapping source, but lacked the intelligence that other enterprise GIS software had, like field boundaries, land imports, or warnings about priority habitat. Yet this highly technical, desktop-based mapping software just doesn’t work for these kinds of flexible, fast-paced projects, or within the charity’s budget. This is why Protect Earth uses Land App to plan out their projects.
Using Land App’s features, the team can quickly create planting and habitat plans. These plans can be shared, printed, edited and doodled over to gather feedback from everyone involved. This means Protect Earth can efficiently get to a plan that works for the community.
Land App’s features mean these plans can easily be converted into grant applications to explore funding, reports to calculate costs such as the number of saplings and the length of fencing, and ongoing records for Protect Earth to store photos and tree survival evidence using Land App mobile.
Storing all their plans and records in one shared place saves Phil and the team huge amounts of time. When out on site, team members know exactly what needs doing and can save information from the site in a single accessible place. Similarly, as the team grows, new managers can quickly get an understanding of what is planned and has already been done across a site, making handover and onboarding far easier.
Conclusion
In a world of great funding expectations and great funding depressions, it’s refreshing to hear about organisations like Protect Earth that are pushing forwards to accelerate the changes that are needed. Land App gives these projects the flexibility they need to scope, plan, collaborate and fund solutions that whole communities support. It isn’t the only tool that provides a solution to these tasks, but according to Phil, it’s the only one that does it at a price that’s remotely affordable for them (similar tools would have cost them at least ten times as much).
Protect Earth provides a solution that works for small sites that often slip through the cracks of slower-moving, more admin-intensive schemes. If you’re a landowner unsure what to do with your land, Phil and the team would love to help you transform your land into a site that works for biodiversity, the climate, and the community.
You can contact Protect Earth and find out more about their work, and if you’re a registered charity, find out how to claim a discount on any Land App subscription plan
