National Trust exceeds conservation targets with the help of GIS

The UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world. As one of the country’s largest landowners, National Trust is doing everything it can to help reverse this decline. Digital transformation and new workflows using GIS from Esri UK are helping it to restore nature across the country.

Back in 2015, the charity set some ambitious 10-year conservation targets, including the creation or restoration of 25,000 Hectares (~100 square miles) of wildlife habitats – an area twice the size of Manchester. This target has been comfortably exceeded.

Responsible for over 500 historic properties, gardens and nature reserves and almost 900 miles of coastline, a complex geographic challenge lay at the heart of the Trust’s 10-year target. Much of the work focused on expanding existing habitats to buffer them from external pressures and creating better, larger areas of new habitat, allowing species to move more easily across the landscape.

Work included creating peatlands, meadows, wetlands, woodlands and saltmarsh across National Trust’s 1,000 square miles of landholdings, helping to stop the decline of species and adapting landscapes to deal with worsening climate crisis.

Digital transformation

“Our focus on restoring our most important habitats to help our precious wildlife is not only contributing towards national conservation targets but is also a critical response to the challenge of climate change,” explained Huw Davies, Head of Data at the National Trust. “Digital transformation is playing a vital role in supporting this mission, with geospatial tools introducing new workflows, helping to understand what we need to do where and monitor improvements over time.”

A significant part of the national initiative relied on GIS (Geographic Information System) software from Esri UK to give it the data-driven approach required. New geospatial tools were used to record existing habitats, plan new works, report on progress against KPIs and understand spatial patterns.

The National Trust first started using GIS from Esri UK in 2014, mostly relying on a handful of desktop licences, for planning the start of the 2015 10-year strategy. GIS tools were developed and deployed to plan, implement and evidence its delivery.

Shift to SaaS

Today, GIS has significantly advanced. The charity has a full enterprise platform used by over 2,500 staff, volunteers and partners to deliver various projects. It moved to Esri’s ArcGIS Online SaaS software three years ago, as part of its wider digital transformation strategy, enabling new services such as mobile apps and dashboards to be more easily developed and streamline workflows. This move to the cloud was driven by limitations of the existing single server architecture not being able to support the growing number of GIS users.

Ian Dawes, GIS Product Manager at National Trust, said: “Any GIS we used had to be rapidly scalable, easily deployable and integrate effortlessly with other systems so data could be shared internally and workforce productivity could be improved. Adopting a SaaS approach has meant we’ve been able to grow the user base of the nature restoration apps to around 500 staff without increasing costs. A few years ago, rangers would not have used a tablet but today they realise collecting data can help in many ways.”

The Trust first carried out spatial analysis of multiple data layers to understand where changes could be made, which would have the largest impact on improving habitats. Mobile apps were then created so rangers and property staff could capture all planned works and record progress over time. The central mapping app shows all stages of activity involved in creating habitats, natural colonisation, where funding has come from and Biodiversity Net Gain standards, to name a few of the data layers. All data feeds into a dashboard so KPIs can be monitored.

Climate resilience

Major projects included restoring over 12,000 acres of blanket bog in the Peak District, to help lock away carbon. Elsewhere, almost 9,000 acres of meadow restoration has been achieved to reintroduce wildflowers to benefit pollinators. As part of the Peak District blanket bog project, the Trust planted around one million sphagnum moss plants and created over 10,000 dams to slow water flow. This work is creating homes for wildlife including dragonflies, golden plover, frogs and lizards. The restoration work is not only protecting the area’s precious peat but also mitigates flood risk and ensures the landscape is more resilient to the changing climate.

The nature conservation dashboard is now viewed alongside other management KPIs, including Membership, Finance and HR, so nature recovery trajectories can be monitored and reach their full potential. Management can zoom from local to national level allowing easy comparisons by region and identify patterns and trends. Meadows and grasslands, for example, is the primary type of improved habitat in London and the South East. This helps to understand where the most effective actions are taking place.

Robust data

“The power of geography helped to reach our significant 10-year conservation milestone,” concluded Davies. “Taking action to protect species, conserve the natural landscape and bring nature back to life can only be driven by robust evidence. GIS gives us the insight we needed to implement change and understand where to plant more trees, flood salt marshes or reinstate rivers and qualified that we had exceeded the target ahead of schedule.”

In January 2025 National Trust launched its next 10-year strategy – People and Nature Thriving. At its core are three equally ambitious 2050 goals: to restore nature, to end unequal access to nature, beauty and history, and to inspire millions more people to care and take action. Future plans for GIS at National Trust will help support the new strategy, including investing in data science capabilities to use data and spatial analysis to better model and predict the future. 

About the National Trust

• The National Trust is Europe’s largest conservation charity
• Responsible for over 1,000 square miles of land (250,000 hectares), 896 miles of coastline and 500 historic properties, gardens and nature reserve
• Founded in 1895 with a mission to protect natural and historic places
• 5.4 million members
• 10,000 staff
• Over 40,000 volunteers