What is the Rewild The Church campaign?

The Rewild the Church Campaign is a movement of people within the Church and beyond, asking the Church Commissioners to commit to rewilding 30% of their land by 2030 – the target set by the UN and committed to by the UK Government – to help avert the interminable decline of nature.

In the age of the climate and nature crisis, land is our single most important environmental resource. Land that is degraded, stripped of habitat or farmed intensively drives the decline of nature and the heating of our climate. Land that is rewilded does the opposite, by helping our precious ecosystems recover whilst locking up huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.  

With 50% of land owned by only 1% of the population in Britain, what large landowners like the Church do with their land will determine all of our futures – whether we can still produce food, have clean water, be safe from flooding, have access to green spaces, and see insects in the air and birds in our skies. These all depend on restoring functioning ecosystems, which can only be done at the scale needed by rewilding.

Who are the Church Commissioners and how much land do they own?

The Church of England as a whole owns 200,000 acres of land – some of which includes the things you would expect, like church buildings and graveyards. The Church Commissioners are the wealthy investment arm of the Church of England that owns a £10.3bn asset portfolio, including 105,000 acres of land. 

The majority of this is farmland which is dotted throughout England, with landholdings from Devon to County Durham and many counties in between. Exactly where all the land is located is unclear as the Commissioners have repeatedly declined to release a map of their land, and the Church is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. One of the asks of this campaign is for the Commissioners to make a map of their land publicly available. By making this information accessible, the Commissioners will demonstrate they are willing to be transparent and accountable for the way their land is managed, which is what we should expect of all large landowners!

If you want to imagine what this amount of land looks like when added together, think of Birmingham, which as Britain’s second biggest city measures 65,000 acres in total–and is home to over 1.1m people. The Church Commissioners profit from an area almost twice as big as that. Not bad for one landowner!

Aren’t the Church Commissioners excellent stewards of their land?

Analysis of Church Commissioners’ land by author and campaigner, Guy Shrubsole, and botanist, Tim Harris reveals that it is significantly nature depleted. Woodland coverage on Commissioners’ land is only 3%! That’s far less than the UK’s already dismal average of 12%. Not only do they rank bottom of the list of the UK’s top 10 landowners for woodland coverage; they are also falling further behind. The National Trust, for example, has 18% woodland coverage already, and has recently committed to rewilding 30% of its land!

Additionally, over half of the important habitats, or Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), on Commissioners’ land are in an unfavourable condition. Given that Britain ranks in the bottom 10% of all nations globally for biodiversity, this suggests the Church is presiding over some of the most nature depleted land on the planet! We know it cannot be that clergy would want their pensions funded from land depleted of nature for the sake of maximising profit, when other options exist!

The Commissioners have made some promising gestures in the right direction. The creation of a new nature reserve on the River Wye in 2023 is a great sign that the Commissioners understand the importance of giving land over to nature. The issue is scale. The River Wye project is a 100 acre site – that’s just 0.095% of their holdings!

It is worth noting that, following an inspiring divestment campaign led by groups like Operation Noah and others, the Church Commissioners made the truly commendable step of divesting from fossil fuels in 2023. This was great news and a huge act of environmental leadership. But the Paris Climate Agreement is the UN target that covers only the first half of the climate and nature crisis. Now they need to attend to the other half.

Isn’t the Church doing a lot already?

As we have seen, the Church Commissioners are falling miles behind what the UK Government and UN would say they should be doing for nature. They also trail other large landowners on the state of their land and their ambition. 

As for the Church of England more broadly, it is clear that there is huge love of nature and desire to be good stewards of creation. A Rocha’s Eco Church initiative which parishes up and down the country are involved in, God’s Green Acre, and groups like Operation Noah all do amazing things for nature – from creating wildlife havens in church yards, to asking the Church Commissioners to look after nature!

In February 2024, the Church’s General Synod passed a positive motion calling for action on biodiversity across all Church land. This was a fantastic step in the right direction. However, there are no concrete and measurable targets against which success or failure can be measured, and it does not demand ambitious action from the Church Commissioners.

Last but not least, the Rewild the Church campaign was started within Wild Card by a Christian! We have been working closely with Christian Climate Action, other Christian faith-based groups, clergy, and General Synod members to ensure we are representing views from across the Christian community and Church institution. It seems to us that the Church is full to the brim with people who love nature, and wish for the Church Commissioners to be better stewards of creation. 

Is rewilding 30% of Church land achievable without impacting food security?

Only a staggering 3% of England is currently protected for nature, which means that if we are to reach the UN’s 30×30 target that the UK Government has committed to, then another 27% of the country will need to be rewilded. Given that 67% of England is farmed, rewilding some of this farmland will play an important role in the solution to our country’s nature and biodiversity crises. 

The majority of the Church Commissioners’ huge amount of land is farmland, and so they, alongside their tenant farmers, have an exciting opportunity to contribute to this solution in a big way. This will require working with their tenants to carefully identify land suitable for rewilding, and supporting them in the transition to reintroduce and protect the biodiversity of these landscapes. 

A closer look at the Church Commissioners’ portfolio shows us that the 30×30 target is entirely doable without impacting their most productive land. Of their rural holdings, around 3% is woodland, 2% are Sites of Special Scientific Interest, and 5% are categorised as Grade 4 poor quality agricultural land. There’s also 5,000 acres of lowland peat within the Church Commissioners’ ownership that is technically Grade 1 farmland, but when farmed, emits a staggering amount of carbon into the atmosphere instead of sequestering it – and the Church Commissioners have already been looking into restoring it for that reason. These areas together would already take us halfway to the 30% goal. The remaining 15% can, in consultation with their tenants, be derived from the Grade 3 good to moderate quality farmland that makes up the majority of the Church Commissioners’ portfolio. 

So, rewilding 30% of the Church Commissioners’ land is achievable. Not only is it possible, restoring and protecting the biodiversity of this land is crucial. The collapse of nature and the overheating of our climate is already destroying crops and decimating harvests. Restoring nature, and with it our climate, is now the only way to ensure a food-secure future.

Why rewilding instead of regenerative agriculture?

It is sometimes claimed that we don’t need rewilding because more regenerative forms of farming can make up for the catastrophic decline of nature we are witnessing. This is a false dichotomy. We should be working towards a world in which all farming is as regenerative as possible, but that doesn’t take away the vital need for large areas to be entirely given over to natural processes. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, based on the work of thousands of the world’s leading scientists, recognises this fact when it defines the 30% of land protected for nature as land that is free from any kind of extractive industry. We understand that the Church Commissioners have engaged with some of their tenant farmers to encourage regenerative farming techniques. This is great and should be extended. But it’s simply not enough. If nature is to survive it needs large protected areas that are managed primarily to restore and enhance biodiversity..

How will this affect tenant farmers?

The tenant farmers that do the work on the ground managing the land owned by the Church Commissioners will play a crucial role as part of the rewilding solution to our biodiversity and climate crises. We acknowledge that with the impacts of environmental breakdown and a warming world, changing subsidies post-Brexit and changing global markets, rewilding can seem like another uncertainty to have to think about.

A 30×30 target needs to be complemented with a commitment by the Church Commissioners to work collaboratively with and provide material and financial support that will give tenant farmers the security they need to embrace rewilding on parts of their land. The Church Commissioners hold significant power, both as one of the largest landowners in the UK, and as landlords, and with that come responsibility. While they can help facilitate rewilding at the scale needed because of their significant portfolio, this should not be to the detriment of the tenant farmers as stewards of the land. 

With significant new income streams for rewilding in our new post-Brexit subsidy landscape, alongside lucrative natural capital business opportunities on the private market, rewilding is increasingly a financially attractive option for many farmers – as long as the landlord agrees. And many farmers are seeing their incomes increase as a result of rewilding. 

Wild Card proposes that wherever possible, tenant farmers should be supported to continue as land managers of part or fully rewilded farms. To begin with, they will need the agreement of their landlord and support to apply for the new public funding available for protecting nature. The Crown Estate and Duchy of Cornwall have responded to this need. We hope the Church Commissioners can do the same.

In addition to working with its tenant farmers to access these new funding streams, the Church Commissioners could boost their rewilding efforts by taking land in hand when tenancies end, and managing it directly as a nature restoration project – as the National Trust is doing.

We argue that the Commissioners should invest some of their significant profits as grants directly to their tenant farmers to support rewilding – an initiative that could be started immediately. 

Ultimately, a functioning ecosystem and climate will help farmers, which is part of the reason why so many farmers are at the leading edge of the rewilding movement in the UK. 

So, how are we trying to drive this change?

First, we got in contact with the Church Commissioners directly – way back in 2022, with emails to ask them to meet with us every few months since then. Most recently we sent a letter with Chris Packham – which received no acknowledgement. None of them have yet found an hour to meet with us and hear what members of their own Church, and the general public who depend on the health of our land, are asking for.

Our petition to the Archbishop and the Church Commissioners to commit to rewild 30% of their 105,000 acres by 2030 is now over 100,000 signatures (do sign it here if you haven’t already!). 

In October, we marched from the Tate Modern to St Paul’s Cathedral with Chris Packham and hundreds of people including clergy and laity (see these write-ups in the Independent and in the Church Times). We delivered our ‘95 Wild Theses’, written by people such as Dr Rowan Williams, Stephen Fry, George Eustice, Caroline Lucas, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Michael Gove, which you can read in full here.

In collaboration with many members of the Church and Christian community, we are now supporting a General Synod member who is developing a Private Member’s Motion, calling for the 30×30 rewilding target of Church Commissioners’ land. 

And finally, at the suggestion of many church groups who got in touch with us and asked how they could communicate their support of the campaign to the Church Commissioners, we published this craftivist action pack, which enables people to create a craft animal and send it, along with a letter, to the Church Commissioners at Church House.

Rewilding 30% by 2030 will demonstrate to Christians and the wider public that the Church understands the emergency facing us, and is keen to be on the right side of history. Let us know if you have any other questions or suggestions for us at rewildthechurch@wildcard.land.