Rewilding & BNG at Elmore Court, Gloucestershire

Wild Service has been providing ecological support to the Elmore Estate to facilitate the development of a re-naturalised landscape at Elmore Court in addition to dedicating 140 acres of land to wildlife recovery through biodiversity net gain as a registered offsite biodiversity scheme. The re-naturalisation process will create a mosaic of habitats, including reinstatement of some wetland areas (which had historically been drained to form agricultural fields), that will be of greater biodiversity value. Conservation grazing will be a key management technique on this landscape, where larger mammals will be brought onto the land and allowed to graze across the landscape. 

Wild Service was initially commissioned to undertake a Preliminary Ecological Appraisal (PEA) of the ‘rewilding’ area and subsequently a PEA/Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) Assessment of the BNG offset area at Elmore Court in order to provide baseline data to inform habitat management and monitoring plans for the areas. Following the PEA of the rewilding area, we undertook targeted surveys for bats, birds and insects to provide a baseline for future monitoring surveys, which are being used to assess the effects of the rewilding and inform land management and conservation grazing strategies.

Specific ecological management strategies for the rewilding area are being developed with Natural England, Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust/Wild Service, the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) and others (https://www.elmorecourt.com/journal/rewilding-project-plans/). Wild Service devised a Habitat Management and Monitoring Plan for the BNG offset area in collaboration with the Elmore Court Estate and the Gloucestershire Nature And Climate Fund (GNCF - https://glosncf.com/ ). The land, which will be transformed into high priority habitats: floodplain wetland mosaic and lowland meadows, lies within the Local Nature Recovery Strategy (https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/planning-and-environment/ecology-and-landscape/gloucestershire-local-nature-recovery-strategy/ ). This project will not only improve the biodiversity value of Elmore Court’s habitats for wildlife but also improve natural flood management within Gloucestershire.