Rewilding and reward: Can nature restoration provide an income stream?

Sophie was joined by nature restoration and natural capital experts from The Real Wild Estates Company, a unique land management business specialising in ecosystem restoration and nature recovery at scale.

A recording of the session is available below.​

Speakers 

Ben Macdonald 
Head of Nature Restoration, The Real Wild Estates Company

Benedict Macdonald is a British naturalist, conservationist, writer and producer. He currently works as Head of Nature Restoration for The Real Wild Estates Company, whilst writing books and pursuing a range of nature restoration projects in the UK. 

Having studied wildlife since a very early age, he pursued a career in natural history film-making and has worked on series including The One Show, Springwatch, The Hunt and as a field director for the Emmy-award winning Our Planet; a conservation series narrated by Sir David Attenborough, which premiered on Netflix in 2019. 

As a writer, his first book, Rebirding, highlighted the need for mass-scale nature restoration across the UK, and was the winner of the Richard Jefferies Prize & inaugural winner of the Wainwright Conservation Prize 2020. His second book, Orchard: A Year in England's Eden, co-written with Nicholas Gates, was published by Harper Collins in August 2020 and won the Richard Jefferies Prize for the second year in a row. His third book, Cornerstones, was released in July 2022. 

As a conservationist, Ben has remained at the forefront of public discourse on rewilding, nature restoration, regenerative farming and the reintroduction of lost species to the UK. Ben studied at Christ Church, Oxford. 

Tassilo von Hirsch 
Head of Nature Capital, The Real Wild Estates Company

Previously a sustainability and climate change consultant at PwC and Deloitte, Tassilo von Hirsch is Head of Natural Capital at The Real Wild Estates Company, where he developed and now manages the company’s proprietary WILDnCAT assessment tool. A financial forecasting tool, the WILDnCAT models diverse and complementary revenue streams associated with land and nature restoration, and ultimately provides the economic basis for facilitating landscape recovery. He leads the team’s natural capital policy and market development work, working with clients to better understand their potential income from carbon/environmental credits and agri-environment schemes. 

In his previous roles, Tassilo focused on working with corporate clients and institutions on themes spanning natural capital, nature risk, land-use and forestry and carbon markets. Among others, he is co-author of the World Economic Forum’s Nature Risk Rising report, the Natural Capital Finance Alliance’s Integrating Natural Capital in Risk Assessments, Deloitte’s report on closing the ocean climate finance gap and several IETA carbon market sentiment survey reports. 

Tassilo holds a BA from Worcester College, Oxford and a MSc in Environmental Technology at Imperial College London. 

Sophie Lawrence
Stewardship and Engagement Lead, Rathbone Greenbank Investments

Sophie joined Rathbone Greenbank in January 2020. She is responsible for managing engagement activities on various ESG issues including biodiversity and nutrition, assessing the social and environmental performance of companies and conducting ESG and impact reporting for clients. She started her career at Barclays Bank in 2013 and most recently spent three years at KKS Advisors, a strategy consultancy in London where she led a team specialising in sustainable and impact investment.

She holds an MSc from Imperial College London in Environmental Technology and a BSc in Geographical Sciences from the University of Bristol.