The 30-year journey from birdwatcher to nature finance pioneer.

From a young age, I dreamt of saving the world — restoring nature for the benefit of people. Growing up surrounded by the English countryside, I developed an early fascination with wildlife that would shape every decision I've ever made.

My career began at Jersey Zoological Park in 1989, where Gerald Durrell's vision of conservation showed me what was possible. The years that followed took me through early conservation work, building Ecosulis into a rewilding-focused business, and pioneering innovations in wildlife fencing and green roof technology.

The turning point came in 2013, when I discovered rewilding. It wasn't just another conservation approach — it was a fundamentally different way of thinking about our relationship with the natural world. Instead of managing decline, rewilding offered the possibility of restoration at scale.

In 2019, I published Rewilding: The Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery with Paul Jepson through MIT Press, bringing the science and ambition of rewilding to a global audience. The book was described by Isabella Tree as having the potential to be "of great influence."

But writing about the problem wasn't enough. In 2020, I founded CreditNature to answer the question that kept me awake at night: how do we fund the restoration of nature at the scale the planet needs? Through the NARIA framework — the first scientific methodology to make nature measurable, valuable, and tradeable — we are building the financial infrastructure for rewilding.

Today, through CreditNature, Stabiliti, Nature Means Business, and a growing ecosystem of ventures, I am working to mobilise the capital needed to restore half the planet within our lifetime. The Fear Paradox, my next book, explores why fear is both the greatest barrier and the greatest catalyst for environmental action.

The vision remains as ambitious as it was when I first dreamt it: rewild half the planet by 2050.