Work Begins on the Ground
Farmers in the Cotswolds are beginning work on the UK’s largest nature recovery initiative, restoring over 3,000 hectares across 50 farms in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Warwickshire.
ELR is the third project to enter the implementation phase of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) Landscape Recovery scheme, demonstrating how large-scale environmental impact can align with productive farming and commercial investment.
Led by the North East Cotswolds Farmer Cluster (NECFC), the project combines over £100 million in public funding with private investment and commercial revenue from environmental outcomes. This innovative blended finance model will support farmers over the next 20 years to restore habitats, regenerate landscapes, and deliver measurable benefits for businesses and infrastructure.
Great Yellow’s Role
Working in collaboration with the NECFC and other project partners, Great Yellow has supported the transition from planning to delivery by developing the financial model, commercial framework and governance structures required to make regenerative land use scalable, investable and built for long-term delivery.
Ed Dick, Co-founder and CEO of Great Yellow, said:
“Delivering nature recovery at landscape scale is key to creating real impact and making it investable. The Evenlode Landscape Recovery Project is a major step toward a future where regenerative land use is the norm.
We’re proud to support this work and help build scalable models that deliver measurable ecological outcomes and unlock long-term value for farmers, investors, and the wider landscape. Congratulations to the NECFC team for leading the way.”
Farmer-Led, Catchment-Wide Regeneration
The Evenlode catchment has suffered serious degradation and pollution in recent years, resulting in flood, drought stress, and water contamination, with significant knock-on effects across the wider Thames river basin.
During its 20-year implementation period, ELR will help farmers restore and reconnect priority habitats, enhance biodiversity through nature-friendly farming practices, and improve river health and water quality. Interventions will slow water flow, reduce flood risk, strengthen resilience to extreme weather, ease pressure on infrastructure, and safeguard supply chains and agricultural production.
Tim Field, NECFC General Secretary and Executive Director of Evenlode Landscape Recovery, said:
“This project has been built by farmers and with farmers, who know this land inside out. We’ve seen the pressures building year after year with flooding and tired soils and knew that significant change needed to happen.
Going live now is a real moment of pride because it shows what’s possible when farmers work together for the long-term, taking shared responsibility for their landscapes and passing it on in better shape than they inherited.”
Delivering Nature Recovery Through Working Farms
ELR is a flagship example of how farmers can work collaboratively to deliver meaningful ecological restoration while sustaining food production. It places them at the centre of efforts to tackle nature loss and build landscape resilience.
By linking measurable environmental outcomes to new income streams from nature markets, the project provides a financially resilient model for farms following the phase-out of the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS). This approach enables long-term payments that support biodiversity, enhance landscape resilience, and keep farms productive.
Environmental outcomes will be tracked through a robust, data-led approach, monitoring biodiversity, water management, carbon storage, and farm performance, supported by monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems that provide confidence for private buyers of the ecosystem services delivered by the project.
Tim Coates, Director of the North East Cotswold Farmer Cluster, Managing Director of Evenlode Landscape Recovery, and participating farmer in the project said:
“This is the largest Landscape Recovery project of its kind to reach implementation so far, and that sets a real precedent. It shows that farmers can lead these type of projects that are ambitious, investable and built for the long term.
“By combining innovative public funding structures with private investment, we’re moving away from short-term schemes and creating a model for long-term land stewardship that could be replicated elsewhere, responding to the need for resilient landscapes in all of society’s interests.”
A turning point for UK nature recovery.
The project shows how farmer-led collaboration and blended finance can deliver landscape-scale environmental impact. By ensuring fair, long-term payments to farmers for delivering nature recovery and landscape resilience at scale, it sets a new standard – a replicable blueprint with real potential to transform both nature and the economy.
Read the North East Cotswolds Farmer Cluster's announcement here.
Read Defra’s announcement here.
Photo credit: Dave Gasca
