LNRS user guides: Businesses

Many businesses are already making space for nature on their premises, land holdings, and within their community. The Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) is here to help you do even more and show how your efforts would contribute to the bigger picture.

Funding nature recovery actions 

Contact localnaturerecoverystrategy@oxfordshire.gov.uk to arrange a meeting about how you could support nature recovery work.

Deliver actions for nature on your land or premises

• Every business could support nature by creating or improving habitats in places you use, own, or manage - whether outdoor space, sporting site, garden, allotment, grounds, or habitats such as woodlands, grasslands, ponds, and lakes. Choose an action from our statement of biodiversity priorities that your business could deliver.
• These actions were shaped by input from councils, local organisations, and communities, so by delivering them, your business directly contributes to our nature recovery goals.

What can you do locally

Some parts of Oxfordshire are especially well-suited for restoring and connecting areas of nature. Use the Local Habitat Map to:

• See if the LNRS has mapped particular actions near that your business could deliver, help with, or fund.
• Create a bid for funding, or a business case for delivering nature recovery actions and use the map as part of your ecological evidence to show why your actions should be supported.
• If you offer funding, consider aligning any funding that you give with the Local Nature Recovery Strategy recommendations, encourage people to deliver actions in places that may help create a robust, joined up network.

Even if your business or area of interest isn’t mapped, there are still plenty of actions your business can take. Our statement of biodiversity priorities has a number of unmapped measures that could benefit nature in all kinds of habitat types, community-used spaces, and agricultural and rural landholdings.

Support rare and threatened local wildlife

Nearly 900 species in Oxfordshire are threatened or at risk with extinction. Our species priorities list explains which species need extra help locally, which may live in your local area, and what you could do to help. The list includes wildlife such as hedgehogs, bats, swifts, various butterflies, house martins, and certain types of flowers, plants and trees.

Have a look at the list to see if there’s any actions your business might be able to take. You can use the LNRS as evidence for funders and with local people to show why the project matters and to explain what needs to happen.

Learn more about biodiversity

Find out more about Oxfordshire’s nature and the challenges it faces. You can read and explore sections of our description of the strategy area document.

You might find particular information that is relevant to your work. The more you know, the more confidently you can advocate for nature within your business and when working with others.

Invest in local nature projects and engage employees

Provide funding or sponsorship for projects that deliver LNRS actions and help to create the LNRS mapped network. This could be through biodiversity net gain credits, CSR budgets, or nature-based carbon offsets.

Visit the Oxfordshire Local Nature Partnership website to hear about strategic projects and get involved with business-related opportunities for nature recovery and investment.

Visit the Oxfordshire Green Futures website to see an initial suite of investment-ready opportunities. Bring your skills to collaborate with local nature partnerships, conservation NGOs, or councils to support or co-deliver projects.

Use CSR opportunities to encourage employee engagement with nature, such as internal learning opportunities, volunteering days, and supporting community initiatives.

Be an advocate for nature

Your influence within the business community matters. You can:

• Advocate for LNRS-supportive or nature-supportive policies in your industry or sector.
• Join the 100 Together community to share best practices and ideas to bring investment into the environmental projects in the County.
• Encourage any suppliers or supply chains you use to align their actions with LNRS goals. Encourage or require suppliers (especially in sectors like agriculture, construction, or energy) to support LNRS priorities. You could offer incentives for nature-positive practices.
• Join a neighbourhood plan group and help embed nature into local visions.
• Educate employees and customers on the biodiversity crisis, the importance of biodiversity, and how they can help.

Resources and support

• Projects for Nature aims to connect businesses with quality nature projects, to help close the nature finance gap and recover the health of our planet.
• The UK Business & Biodiversity Forum (UKBBF) aims to accelerate the mainstreaming of biodiversity in business operations and public decision making.
• Nature Positive are specialists in partnering with businesses to navigate the complex landscape of environmental and social sustainability.
• Join the Thames Valley Business and Nature Recovery Linked-In group for peer support.
• Aim to align your business with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).