Every piece of land, however small or large - from the smallest gardens to large-scale ‘Living Landscape’ projects - can help protect and restore the UK’s battered biodiversity.

Every organisation that owns or uses land can play a part by managing their land with the environment in mind. And with increasing awareness of the need to develop more sustainable business operations, biodiversity is becoming an essential part of mainstream environmental management systems (EMS), such as ISO 14001 (the International Standard for environmental management) or EMAS (The Eco-Management and Audit Scheme).

Guidance materials produced by Defra and others also provide advice on how to integrate biodiversity with environmental management processes.

The Wildlife Trusts’ Biodiversity Benchmark is the first award for business to recognise continual biodiversity improvement. It was set up to support the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) to help increase the contribution that businesses can make towards enhancing biodiversity.

As you would expect from the UK’s leading conservation organisation, the Biodiversity Benchmark is independent, rigorous and tough to achieve – and of course good for biodiversity!

* Thank you to Richard Burkmar for the images on this page.