Our Purpose
At Tir Natur, our purpose is to:
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1. Bring nature back to Wales — back into our landscapes and into our lives.
2. Restore natural carbon cycles, healthy soils and clean watercourses.
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To do this through rewilding, i.e., by restoring the complexity of ecosystems.
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Scroll down to find out more.
"to restore every quivering strand of the wonderful web of life"
At Tir Natur we will take a new approach to nature recovery in Wales that maximises biodiversity and bio abundance. This approach constructs natural carbon cycles and, crucially, it works at scale. It aims to restore ecosystems as much as possible so that nature can take care of itself and determine its own course. This is rewilding.
An ecosystem is defined as an area where plants, animals and other organisms interact with each other and their physical environment. It is a rich tapestry created through millions of years of co-evolution. Quite simply, we have pulled at the threads of this tapestry and reduced ecosystems to their most simple form. Our purpose is to restore every quivering strand of this wonderful web of life so that nature can flourish now and into the future.
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Traditional conservation methods, improving current good practice in farming and ‘tinkering at the edges’ are not going to be enough to address the scale of the nature crisis. Over the past decades, traditional conservation has done incredible work to protect the wildlife that we have in this country, but the statistics show that nature is still in decline. There is so little of nature left, and we need something more.
"we do this for nature's own intrinsic value and right to exist"
Rewilding, or ecosystem restoration, differs from traditional nature conservation which often identifies key species or habitats that are under threat and then takes steps to protect them. This can come at the expense of the wider ecosystem and relies heavily on human resources, which are becoming more and more unreliable.
At Tir Natur, we want to put nature front and centre — not as something to be controlled or tolerated, but set free. We do this for nature's own intrinsic value and its right to exist, but the benefit that nature brings to our own lives also is immeasurable. We are part of nature and we must rediscover our place within it. We must relearn to empathise with nature so that we and future generations are more likely to take steps to protect it.
Bringing people along on the rewilding journey is part of our purpose as a charity. Firstly, by stressing the key role that large grazers, and therefore farming, has to play in ecosystem restoration; and, secondly, by encouraging people to visit any Tir Natur project, which will always be open access.
"rewilding recovers nature to its most complex and complete form"
It is time to reimagine what is possible to achieve in our landscapes with regard to nature. Our purpose is to change the narrative away from ‘protecting what is left of wildlife’, to ‘restoring ecosystems at scale’. For too long we have expected too little from our landscapes, but this must change if nature is to survive in the future.
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Rewilding recovers nature to its most complex and complete from. It restores soil health and the quality of water courses. Carbon is sequestered, not by the planting of non-native trees, but by restoring natural carbon cycles.
Furthermore, rewilding can produce high quality, ethical and genuinely sustainable food and make rural communities more resilient. Finally, it can improve the well-being of society by reconnecting people to wild nature.
This is Our Purpose
At Tir Natur we ensure that at least 90% of donations will go directly towards purchasing or leasing land for nature recovery. Admin costs are kept to an absolute minimum.
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What's more, this land will be open for you to visit, so you can witness nature make its return in the knowledge that you made it happen!
Photo credits in order - Beavers (Scotland: The Big Picture), Wild Boar (Shutterstock), Red Squirrel (Scotland: The BIg Picture)