Registering a Natural Investment Zone

Contact us to register your Project or NIZ
View of lake, surrounded by rich green land with hills in the distance

Strategic Nature Network Map

These registrations will build the Strategic Nature Network (SNN) model in to demonstrate the scale of deliverable ambition there is now across the UK, and where investment is required to safeguard (protection) or secure (restoration) these. 

The NIZs will also be used to identify where landscape connectivity needs to be maintained (protection linked to the LNRS) or created (via ecological restoration of habitat and physical reconnection/ defragmentation across man-made infrastructure). 

View the SNN Map

Natural Investment Zone Criteria

Terrestrial NIZ Mapping

Consisting of 

  1. Large areas of pre-existing good habitat (for future ecosystem service maintenance),  
  2. Large areas of future contiguous new habitat to be delivered through restoration (for future additional ecosystem service delivery) 
  3. Buffer zones around this habitat delivered through nature friendly/ regenerative farming IF terrestrial. 

Marine NIZ Mapping

Initially these should be confined to MPAs that adjoin terrestrial NIZs and/ or could be linked as classified by being more than 10Km from shore and therefore represent feasible connections near-coastal restoration activities. 

These criteria will be checkable/ selectable through drop-down boxes and checkboxes (as below) to enable initial qualitative analysis by those submitting to check that their suggested areas meeting the RBN requirements.   

Primary criterion = size: 

  • Confirmation that current and/ or potential size of habitat to be protected/ expanded up on, or restored from low ecological condition to high ecological condition exceeds 10,000Ha/ 10km2. 
  • GIS upload/creation system for polygon of overall area boundary. 

Supplementary criteria [and information to gather wherever possible]: 

  • Estimation (if available) of potential core ecological area 
  • GIS upload/creation for polygon of core ecological area 
  • Estimation (if available) of potential buffer/ multi-use zone around this 
  • Further drop down to provide information on partners committed to implementing this 
  • Further drop down for any existing ecosystem services for NIZ 
  • Ecosystem service the NIZ will deliver (tick boxes against access/ carbon lock up/ bng/ water quality/ flooding and drought) 
  • Further drop down to provide any estimates and additional information on the above including initial/ 50/ 99yr cost of implementation 

Defragmentation Mapping

Connectivity analysis will be by the RN technical team at the back end of the website to identify the optimal connection points between NIZs as they are submitted.  

This will also be displayed, giving clear strategic targets for new national conservation initiatives.  

The connectivity analysis will focus on national bottlenecks. There are two options which we will pursue. Either identifying national bottlenecks in connectivity without accounting for the existing projects, essentially giving theoretical priorities, or using a national map of habitat permeability to determine the least cost path between two major project, giving the most logical connections between the RN projects. 

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