Highlands Rewilding - Nature Equity Partnership Announced

Jeremy Leggett

When I set Highlands Rewilding up, I had in mind two vital roles for the company. First, trustably verifiable monetisation of the natural capital we manage, to help lead the way in the new market. Second, science and data-gathering of a quality sufficient to help make the entire embryonic nature-recovery industry confidently investable. Stating that second role another way, our aim is to help make nature an asset class.

Neither objective have we yet achieved, but we have taken encouraging steps towards both. Based on the natural capital we have mapped out on the 1,784 hectares of land we currently manage we project £72 million of net profits for the company over the next 15 years. And the science and data gathering we have completed along the way has been reviewed very favourably by our peer group.

This week we took what I hope will be a highly significant step towards helping make nature an asset class. 

On Tuesday, in Zurich, a new player entered the nascent nature-recovery industry. It is a fintech newco called Nature Equity. Its founder is Peter Sparrow, who set up and led Deloitte's practice on data and natural-capital accounting, working with major organisations and governments delivering early projects to add nature as an asset on their balance sheets. With seed capital from some of Highlands Rewilding’s shareholders, Peter will be now be leading an elite team of analysts and software developers in the race to use AI in developing the go-to accountancy packages for natural capital and flood management. These do not exist yet. Given the general drive to make nature an asset class, the player who succeeds in developing the accountancy platform of choice for big organisations will become a very valuable company indeed, in short order.

The Highlands Rewilding science team will be working with Nature Equity to help calibrate the software, applying AI to our data collected in multiple ecosystems over five years, and our ability to marry data on the ground with data from remote sensing. The intention is that our team will grow in lockstep with the new entrant. Crucially, in recognition of the value we can add to their proposition, Highlands Rewilding has a 20% “sweat equity" stake in Nature Equity (meaning we will be a significant minority shareholder without paying a penny for the shares). One of our shareholders, James Cameron, will chair the company, and another, Paddy Padmanathan, will serve with James and Peter on the inaugural board. Key members of our science team will be on an advisory board.

For Highlands Rewilding shareholders, it is my heartfelt hope that this partnership will add value - potentially significant value - to your shares. For the wider stakeholder community, I hope that the new partnership will be able to advance all our causes in the general effort to abate climate meltdown and halt and reverse biodiversity collapse.

Jeremy Leggett and Peter Sparrow announce the Highlands Rewilding - Nature Equity partnership at the Prestel and Partner Family Office Forum in Zurich, 11th November 2025. 

Our Development and Policy Director, Dr Hannah Rudman, caught up with Peter to find out more about the race to develop go-to accountancy packages for natural capital and flood management using AI.