About

The Oxfordshire Treescape Project (OTP), which ran from 2019 to 2023. It continues as the Oxfordshire Nature Project, hosted by Community Action Groups Oxfordshire.

The website for OTP is no longer extant; below is information about OTP, and resources created by the project from 2019-2023. For support with parish nature recovery please contact naturerecovery@cagoxfordshire.org.uk

Hyperlinks within the project resources have been redirected to this page, and contact email address to naturerecovery@cagoxfordshire.org.uk; all other contents remain unchanged.

Oxfordshire Treescape Project was founded in 2019. It was a collaborative project between academics, NGOs, local government and the private sector that aimed to support land managers, parishes and communities in nature recovery planning. In 2021 a small charity, GrowGreenCarbon, and the Environmental Change Institute agreed to jointly curate the project and build on the Oxfordshire opportunity mapping developed by OTP founders Victoria Macnamara and Jamie Hartzell in collaboration with Alison Smith (ECI), in particular working to find ways to deliver action on the ground. They developed templates for reports based on detailed opportunity mapping which showed:

existing natural assets that should be sensitively managed;

potential locations for new nature-positive assets such as woodland, species rich grassland, hedges or agroforestry;

what natural benefits (natural flood management, biodiversity, carbon storage, air pollution reduction and health and well-being) could be provided in those locations.

Thames Valley Environmental Records Centre (TVERC) were involved in template design, and were responsible for creating each report using an automated system.

The reports were about starting conversations, stimulating ideas and building confidence and resources to facilitate the development of plans for nature recovery; report recipients were supported in developing their ideas through advice on working with stakeholders and potential collaborators, linking them up with expert advisors and funders, and a range of other resources such as free access to interactive mapping, our newsletter, and support in working through Getting Started with Parish Nature Recovery guide.

For many parishes, this has been the first time they have considered nature recovery alongside their other neighbourhood development plans for their community; and for those further along the journey, it has helped them identify the main priority areas for nature recovery, and where they should focus their efforts. For farmers and landowners, it has helped them start to consider how they evolve their businesses best to engage with nature recovery and nature based-solutions, which are core elements of the new central government farming funding, Environmental Land Management Scheme. Farming planning and change in farming businesses takes time, and having mapped information about where on a farm natural benefits can be delivered and where nature recovery interventions might be successful feeds into land use planning.

Oxfordshire Treescape Project worked as a small, agile team, continually learning from the stakeholders we worked with and evolving knowledge and experience in how to most effectively support land managers and communities in nature recovery efforts.

Project outputs

Example Opportunity Report

This Treescapes Opportunity Report is an example of a parish report showing existing natural assets, potential locations for nature recovery opportunities (species-rich grassland, woodland, hedgerows, silvo-arable or silvo-pasture, community orchards), and the natural benefits that they could provide. Such reports were provided free of charge to 150 Oxfordshire parish groups and land managers, thanks to funding from the Woodland Trust.