The next chapter
RSK Wilding was founded by Jon Davies in early 2020 when it became clear that biodiversity net gain (BNG) was the direction of travel in England and that developers would need biodiversity offsetting and habitat creation to gain consent for their development projects. In a past life, Jon worked at the Natural History Museum, carrying out research into tropical beetle diversity, which is the inspiration for RSK Wilding’s stag beetle logo. The business’s primary objective is to restore and create diverse habitats literally buzzing with invertebrates, since they are the main building blocks of biodiversity.
The idea for RSK Wilding arose when Jon had a conversation at a party with a businessman who had recently read Isabella Tree’s book Wilding and was keen to do his own rewilding. In time-honoured fashion, the (slightly) drunk Jon said that he could help: after all, we had a team of talented ecologists keen to carry out habitat restoration. This soon developed into a more BNG-targeted offering (with rewilding being part of the mix, where appropriate), and the rest is history, which goes to show that alcohol isn’t always bad for you! The team is now 12-strong and will be working closely with Biocensus (particularly its team of experienced botanists) to provide a high-quality BNG service for all our clients. This next chapter promises to be an exciting one, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for RSK Wilding!
Commenting on the move, Jon Davies, Director of RSK Wilding, said:
“For the last couple of years, Wilding has been part of RSK’s biodiversity and sustainability consultancy business Nature Positive; however, given the mandatory requirement for BNG now and its almost universal application across all development projects that we are working on, it seemed more sensible that the team should move across and sit within Biocensus.
“All three teams will of course continue to work closely together, with significant synergies remaining with the work that Nature Positive does, especially in relation to biodiversity.”