What was the brief?
A Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) is a plan that has been created to repair habitats and make them better, increase biodiversity and to help wildlife thrive. In 2021, the UK Government passed an Environment Bill, which set out a number of targets and programmes to improve nature.
The West of England Local Nature Recovery Strategy and Toolkit is a collaborative effort to empower residents and communities within the Mayoral Combined Authority and North Somerset to take action for nature, providing valuable resources to support residents, farmers, conservationists and policymakers' efforts in restoring and protecting precious natural habitats in their local area and beyond.
The brief was to create a digital platform focused on an interactive map, which would provide detailed information on the proposed focus areas for nature recovery (which were proposed to form part of the LNRS and Toolkit), as well as areas already of importance to biodiversity, and capture community insights on these areas.
What did we do?
Participatr was commissioned by the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority to create the interactive online portal, combining several features of our interactive mapping tools to provide and gather information to and from the community and stakeholders.
Using geospatial dat that had been created by the Mayoral Combined Authority, we created clickable areas on the interactive map which took the user through to detailed information on the focus areas for nature recovery and gave them the opportunity to comment on each. Alongside the clickable boundaries on the map, and toggleable layers to change the preferred map view, map visitors were also given the opportunity to 'drop a pin' to highlight observations and priorities for nature recovery at specific locations.
The interactive map sat alongside a range of other features on the 'Nature Recovery West' online hub that we created, including details of events, FAQs, a contact form and a form to sign-up for email updates.
What was the outcome?
- The Nature Recovery West hub was visited by over 9,800 people
- Over 600 interactions were made, including place-based comments in the interactive map, 'agreements' with other map-based comments and feedback questionnaire responses
- The West of England Local Nature Recovery Strategy was the first of its kind (48 in total) to be adopted in November 2024
- Participatr was commissioned to create similar digital platforms for the Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire Local Nature Recovery Strategies, following on from the success of the Nature Recovery West platform
The Nature Recovery West platform - click to enlarge