Hildegard Meyer, Ecologist at WWF Central and Eastern Europe

Hildegard is an ecologist with more than 20 years of experience at WWF Central and Eastern Europe. She has led and contributed to a wide range of conservation initiatives, from eco‑tourism and protected area management to habitat connectivity across the Carpathian region. Her core expertise lies in developing and managing complex EU-funded projects, particularly Interreg programmes, in close collaboration with international partners, authorities, research institutions, and private-sector stakeholders.

Her work focuses on ecological connectivity, with a special emphasis on reducing the impact of linear transport infrastructure on wildlife permeability and advancing effective mitigation measures. She has served on the advisory boards of the EU projects REVERSE and BISON and contributed to key publications, including the UIC Guidelines on Managing Railway Assets for Biodiversity. Hildegard is committed to raising awareness, building capacity, and strengthening alliances to address the challenges that transport infrastructure poses to biodiversity at scale.

Ben Hewlett, Senior Biodiversity Advisor at National Highways. 

Ben has been with National Highways for 8 years and has experience supporting major infrastructure projects through planning but also works on national level biodiversity strategy and standards. He has authored the UKs first design standard for wildlife crossings, due to be published later this year, and was the project sponsor for the M25 J10 Green Bridge which is one of the largest in the UK.

James Herd, Director of Reserves Management at Surrey Wildlife Trust.

During his 17 years at Surrey Wildlife Trust, he has been a ranger, part of the conservation grazing team, a commercial development officer and project manager. He now heads up a department of 20 staff, 350 cattle, 250 sheep and 120 red deer who all work tirelessly to deliver nature restoration on the c.5,000ha of land SWT manage directly.

As well as land owned by SWT, the reserves team manage land on behalf of Surrey County Council, The Land Trust and Ministry of Defence. These partnerships are a significant contributor to delivering nature restoration at scale in one of England’s smallest, yet most populous counties.

In 2010 James was part of the team to release Red Deer onto c.850ha of Pirbright Ranges. This was a rewilding project before its time as only large herbivores could be used to manage the habitat and enhance the condition of the SSSI. This project has gone from strength to strength with ecological surveys proving restoring ecosystem functionality is paying dividends for biodiversity and bio abundance.

Living on Wisley Common during the construction of the M25 Junction 10 improvement scheme means James has been closer than anyone to the project. For the last 5 years he’s been working with the project team to ensure it meets all the agreed requirements for nature and to make sure the 22.5ha of restored heath is delivered where there was once pine plantation. The real jewel in the crown has been the construction of UK’s first lowland heathland green bridge which spans the A3, providing 25m width of heathland and directly connects Wisley and Ockham Commons for the first time in many decades.

Craig Bennett OBE, Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts

Craig is Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts, Honorary Professor of Sustainability and Innovation at Alliance Manchester Business School, an Associate Fellow of Homerton College (Cambridge), and a Fellow of The Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. He is also a Commissioner on the UK Government’s Clean Power 2030 Advisory Commission. He was awarded an OBE for services to the environment in the King’s New Year 2026 Honour’s List.
He has been described as “one of the country’s top environmental campaigners”, by The Guardian as “the very model of a modern eco-general” and has also been listed in The Sunday Times Green Power List of the UK’s top 20 environmentalists. Craig was formerly CEO of Friends of the Earth where he led the organisation to numerous campaign victories including on bees, fracking and against airport expansion.

Earlier in his career, Craig was Deputy Director at The University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), and Director of The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change (from 2007 to 2010).

Craig has twenty-five years experience of designing and contributing to Executive Education and Leadership programmes at numerous universities and business schools around the world, and of providing advice and constructive challenge direct to CEOs and company boards. He is currently Chair of the Independent Challenge Group for Anglian Water.

He is also a Policy Fellow of The Centre for Science and Policy and a member of the Churchill Sustainability Practitioners Network at The University of Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking, a judge on The Wainwright Book Prize, a Trustee of the think-tank Green Alliance, and an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM). He regularly appears in the print and broadcast media

He has a BSc (Hons) in Human and Physical Geography from The University of Reading and an MSc in Biodiversity Conservation from University College London, and Honorary Doctoral degrees from University College of Estate Management (UCEM), and Anglian Ruskin University (ARU).