Catalysing community-led local nature recovery with opportunity mapping: lessons from the Oxfordshire Treescape Project

Martha Crockatt, Alison Smith , Caitlin Hafferty, Jamie Hartzell, Victoria Macnamara, Marcus Simmons

1. Background. The UK has ambitious nature recovery targets. Local communities and land managers have knowledge, expertise, and capacity to support place-based nature recovery, making them well-placed to help deliver these goals. We explore how these groups can be supported in nature recovery plans that combine their local knowledge with complex ecological data, using Oxfordshire Treescape Project (OTP) as a case study.
2. Methods. OTP provided free reports to interested Oxfordshire communities (focusing on parishes, the lowest tier of local government) and land managers. These contained maps showing: existing nature assets; locations where nature recovery options such as woodland, agroforestry or species-rich grassland could be suitable according to simple rules; and the resulting expected changes in ecosystem service provision, generating wider benefits and avoiding trade-offs (including food production). Further resources were developed by OTP in response to demand. A survey of community report recipients explored what nature recovery challenges and opportunities they faced and which of OTP’s resources were most valued and impactful.
3. Findings. In just four years, a small, agile team with limited funding developed the mapping and delivered 76 parish reports and 40 land manager reports, catalysing the development of several formal nature recovery plans. A survey of parish report recipients found that this audience highly valued the combination of opportunity maps, personalised support from the OTP team, and resulting collaborations between community groups, NGOs and local experts. Land manager reports typically acted as conversation starters, prompting consideration of alternative land management options that could deliver multiple ecosystem services. Communities highly valued existing nature recovery partnerships with land managers, but were often unsure how to establish new relationships.
4. Synthesis and applications. The combination of reports, local knowledge, personalised support and introductions to relevant partners helped communities apply their knowledge and enthusiasm to develop local plans that supported broader nature recovery efforts. Lessons learnt can help scale up the approach. Lower land manager take-up was attributed to rapidly changing economic and policy conditions, including uncertainty over the availability of future nature-friendly farming subsidies (ELMS). More resources are needed to support mutually beneficial community–land manager relationships.