FedEx Grant to Rewilding Europe Sponsors Nature Restoration in Scotland
Three-year grant enables non-profits to further physical rewilding efforts while exploring the potential of rewilded land for both nature recovery and carbon capture
Launched by Rewilding Europe, together with Scottish non-profit Trees for Life and local stakeholders last September, the project seeks to create a vast nature recovery area across a spectacular sweep of the Highlands. Over the coming three years, FedEx funding will support the non-profit’s work with local communities, organisations, and landowners, to enhance biodiversity, address climate change and create new opportunities by helping to develop a nature-based economy. “By supporting rewilding, we want to make a connection between carbon capture as a concept and what these natural solutions can really look like on the ground. Now is an exciting moment to get behind this form of land use, as projects like this seek to demonstrate not only the environmental benefits of rewilding, but also connect landowners to alternative sources of income that may not have been possible or accessible until now,” said David Canavan, Chief Operating Officer, FedEx Express Europe. “Having support from FedEx early in the development of Affric Highlands is a great kick-start enabling positive grassroots, community-led actions for the coming three years. When corporate partners like FedEx speak to the value of rewilding – for carbon capture and biodiversity impact – it helps landowners unlock the potential of their land and the benefits of restoring nature at landscape scale,” said Frans Schepers, Managing Director at Rewilding Europe.
A second but important component of the FedEx grant to Rewilding Europe provides year one funding to develop a carbon credit standard for rewilding across Europe. Rewilding Europe aims to guide towards an accurate value for the carbon capture potential of land that has been rewilded and that is simultaneously reversing biodiversity decline.
FedEx is committed to reducing its emissions, with a goal of achieving carbon neutral operations by 2040. Alongside focused emissions reductions efforts, charitable grants to environmental non-profit organisations seek to promote and scale nature-based solutions for addressing climate challenges.
