National Estate for Nature
The National Estate for Nature comprises fourteen of England’s largest public and private landowners. Assembled by Defra, they must work together to accelerate nature recovery and help to meet the UN goal of 30% of land protected for nature by 2030.
Together, they own 10% of England. Without them playing as a team and doing all they can for nature on their own land, England’s nature will continue to be decimated.
Large landowners have a responsibility to act for nature. The public have a right to have a say over how private land is managed.
We are calling on the NEN to get 30by30 over the line and score a massive win for nature.
The national estate for nature leader board
Wild Card, in collaboration with land researcher and writer Guy Shrubsole, have analysed the plans produced by the NEN members, and ranked their current action and commitments for nature.
This leader board is not fixed, and we encourage landowners to get in touch and make further public commitments that would move them further up the leader board (our email is nationalestate@wildcard.land)!
To increase transparency and action for nature, we want to see the UK Government:
- provide a standardised and publicly accessible reporting framework that landowners must follow, including maps of total landholdings and existing contributions to 30by30;
- require each landowner to set an area-based target towards 30by30 on their own estate;
- include a ratchet mechanism to increase ambition towards 30by30, in which each target set is more ambitious than the last.
The UK public has a right to have a say over how major landowners are managing their land. That is why we are also calling on a new mandate for nature for all landowners with holdings of 1000 hectares or greater (in line with the Scottish Land Reform Act (2025)‘s definition of major landowners), not just for those in the NEN.
