Biodiversity
The aim is habitat, not tree cover. A patch can hit its planting targets and stay quiet, because variety of life depends on variety of structure and species, not a count of stems (booming restoration, flat biodiversity, news). Making room for wildlife is the whole point, so this is the measure that matters most.
Non-negotiables
- Survey before and after — a baseline is the only way to show recovery.
- Build structure, not just canopy: ground cover, shrubs, understorey, dead wood.
- Protect existing habitat features; let succession run rather than over-tidying — full recovery can take decades, with some grasslands needing 75+ years for pollinators (grasslands need decades to recover, news).
Options & pathways
- Habitat features — ponds, log piles, hedges, nest sites; cheap, fast niches.
- Rewilding natural processes — with enough space and time, including missing species; resilient and low-effort, slower to direct (rewilding helps forests work with nature, opinion; returning predators drives trophic cascades, news).
- Active management — for specific species or invasives; targeted but ongoing, easy to overdo.
Monitor with simple repeatable counts, citizen-science tools, and fixed-point photos; local and indigenous observers often see what visiting surveys miss (indigenous data collectors, news).