# Over £150k awarded to rewilding projects with a focus on including young people

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2025/01/16/over-150k-awarded-to-rewilding-projects-with-a-focus-on-including-young-people/
- Published: 2025-01-16T08:46:49+00:00
- Author: Melanie May

**Over £150,000 is being awarded to eleven rewilding projects across Britain working
to help combat the ​‘teenage dip’ in nature connectivity and bring young people 
into rewilding.**

[Rewilding Britain](https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/) is awarding up to £15,000
each to the projects through its Rewilding Innovation Fund. The projects are focused
on introducing rewilding to children and young people through rewilding education
and play spaces, interactive rewilding education and youth-led rewilding, and are
based across the UK from the Highlands of Scotland to inner city London.

[Scouts](https://www.scouts.org.uk/) is among the recipients. The charity nationally
manages Adventure Centres across England for young people, which extend across more
than 300 hectares in some of the UK’s most valuable and vulnerable protected landscapes,
including Ashdown Forest and the Lake District. Funding awarded by Rewilding Britain
will help reconnect Scout Adventure Centres with nature and bring in expertise to
translate recent habitat reviews into step-by-step management plans to bring the
principles of rewilding to these popular Scouting spaces.

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Bex Craske, Group Sustainability Manager at Scouts, said: ​

> “At Scouts, we create opportunities for young people to thrive in nature and develop
> skills for life. Scouting provides young people with new opportunities for fun,
> adventures and chances to learn about the world in which they live. Funding from
> Rewilding Britain has enabled us to create a framework for the next decade to 
> ensure nature spanning our sites gets the opportunity to thrive too. The new framework
> will give Scouts the chance to learn new skills, including practical nature recovery
> techniques, understanding and tracking biodiversity gain and continuing to explore
> their connection to nature.”

Other charities awarded funding include [The Wilderness Foundation](https://wildernessfoundation.org.uk/),
based in Essex, to support its outdoor education programme, and rewilding movements
established and run directly by young people, such as Youngwilders, which for the
past three years, in collaboration with the Knepp Wildland Foundation, has hosted
youth rewilding summit Overgrowth (previously known as Resurgence).

Over half of attendees since 2022 have received subsidised tickets and travel support,
and now, supported by the funding, Youngwilders is extending the scope of the summit
to deliver an additional summit in the north of England and running a series of 
online activations to connect the two events.

Eight further projects have been awarded up to £15,000 each, including several species
reintroduction projects.

Sara King, Rewilding Manager at Rewilding Britain, said: ​

> “Children are often naturally drawn to nature – think mud pies, sliding down grassy
> banks, making daisy chains, chasing birds. But then suddenly there’s this dip 
> when the teen years hit, which can last well into adulthood, of disconnection 
> and disinterest in nature.
>  
> “We are one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and encouraging
> the next generation to be more informed and embrace wild nature is critical to
> nature’s recovery.
>  
> ​“These projects are doing amazing, innovative things to engage young people in
> rewilding, whether that’s offering outdoor education in wild spaces, bringing 
> the joys of rewilding into previously managed spaces or using technology to educate
> young people on what rewilding means and how it can shape their future.”

#### More funding available

Since 2021, the twice-yearly [Rewilding Innovation Fund](https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/how-to-rewild/funding-for-rewilding/rewilding-innovation-fund)
has funded 55 initiatives. Projects have two opportunities to apply each year, in
the new year and summer. A funding window is currently open with a deadline of 28
February for applications.

To [apply for funding](https://rewildingbritain.beaconforms.com/form/9812c66c) –
with up £15,000 available per project – projects must be:

 * based in Britain (England, Wales and Scotland)
 * cover at least 40 hectares of contiguous land
 * part of the [Rewilding Network](https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/rewilding-network)(
   it is possible to join at the point of application)
 * rewilding (or about to) at scale – potentially as a group of landowners – and
   to these [rewilding principles](https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/why-rewild/what-is-rewilding/an-introduction-to-rewilding/defining-rewilding)

There is also an annual [Challenge Fund](https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/how-to-rewild/funding-for-rewilding/rewilding-challenge-fund).

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