NEWS
PICTURE : DOUG MOODY
New legislation on protecting wildlife leads to best year ever for Naturally Wild
Natural progress – the Naturally Wild team
BY SARAH WALKER
A Stockton-based ecology consultancy has enjoyed its “ best year ever ” doubling turnover and staff numbers – and it is still growing !
Naturally Wild offers conservation and ecology consultancy to the construction sector and the likes of Highways England and Network Rail , to ensure protected wildlife species in Britain remain unharmed by bulldozers .
The company was set up 25 years ago and has a surprising number of competitors who work on tasks such as protecting rare and nesting birds , making new homes for badgers , capturing reptiles like snakes and lizards and safely moving dormice and newts .
But after an “ interesting ” year of growth and development , director and ecologist Graeme Skinner , who founded the firm as a freelance ecologist supporting wildlife around construction projects , believes Naturally Wild is one step ahead of the competition .
“ In the last year , we ’ ve doubled our size so we ’ re now up to a team of 20 and we ’ ve also doubled turnover ,” he said .
“ It ’ s been very good and we are still not finished with the expansion .
“ We are still looking for staff and developing things as there is a lot of innovation and new legislation that ’ s come in that makes the ecology side of construction a little bit more complicated for developers .”
One of the big changes for Naturally Wild has been the development of a training centre in the ground floor of the premises it bought five years ago .
This enables the firm to provide bespoke training to clients on their ecological duties and legal requirements .
In the past year , legislation called “ biodiversity net gain ” has come into force , meaning that anyone developing an area of land has to ensure no wildlife is harmed in the first instance , but also has to create something that actually improves on what was there before from an ecology point of view .
Graeme explains : “ Say you ’ re Amazon and you want to build a new warehouse . To get your planning consent , you have to offset the loss of that land with an improvement on what was there before , so you might have to replace a wild meadow or field somewhere else .
“ There ’ s a massive need within our sector for clients in building , construction and infrastructure development to understand what their legal requirements are in relation to wildlife and ecology . We knew this was coming into force and it was one of the driving forces behind the new training room .”
Alongside new ecologists and other staff , Graeme has made two key appointments in Lauren Gibson as training manager and Alistair Wright as development manager .
“ I ’ ve known our new training manager , Lauren Gibson , for many years ,” said Graeme .
“ The addition of Lauren was something that I have wanted to do to drive the
Naturally Wild director Graeme Skinner
education side as a really important part of the business , but you can only push that side when you are a certain size and you ’ ve got the financial stability to build it .
“ It ’ s taken a lot to get to the stage where I was comfortable in spending a lot of money on developing the business to that degree .”
Graeme says Alistair has also given the business “ a slightly different outlook on things ” as the company attempts to “ keep ahead of the opposition ”.
“ These appointments will make us more competitive ,” says Graeme .
“ Our office in Salisbury has been open about a year and we are hoping to open another office in Herefordshire in September , so we are trying to recruit for that .
“ It ’ s all hard work but we ’ re building a superb team .”
Although based on Teesside , Naturally Wild has contracts all over England , Scotland and Wales .
The company has also won some of the preliminary work on the multi-billion pound Stonehenge road tunnel project , which is now on hold but may re-start soon .
“ We are a very small part of it , but we feel a great sense of pride in being involved in a project like that ,” said Graeme . “ It ’ s certainly been an interesting year .”
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