Bringing nature home: our CEO at the Wild Summit
Our CEO, Charlee Bennett, took to the Terrace stage at this year's Wild Summit at Bristol Beacon, sharing what three years of work with Bristol's communities has taught us about access, nature recovery and what it really takes to make a park feel like it belongs to everyone.
Wild Summit is Wildlife and Countryside Link's national gathering for the nature and climate movement, bringing campaigners, policymakers, scientists and community organisers together to turn ambition into action. Charlee joined the line-up to talk about our work as a partner in Bristol's Nature Towns and Cities project, alongside Portsmouth and Plymouth Councils.
Without access, there's no action
Charlee's message was simple: you can't measure access to nature just by looking at a map.
Our research with the University of Bath, speaking to nearly 300 Bristol residents, found that global majority residents live closer to parks on average than white residents – but are around 40% less likely to use them.
Ask people why they don't go, and distance barely comes up. It's dogs. It's not feeling welcome as a big family group. It's toilets that don't work, or don't feel safe to use. Our work with Disabled people and unpaid carers has uncovered the same pattern, time and again.
Community first, always
Charlee spoke about the access plans we've spent three years developing with local people – community-led, gradual and built around what residents themselves say needs to change. She also made the case that this principle matters just as much for nature recovery as it does for access: creating a new habitat is the easy part, but it only lasts twenty years if a community feels it's theirs to look after.
She gave a shout-out to Eastside Community Trust, who have supported 23 community-led nature projects across Easton and Lawrence Hill in just three months, working alongside Avon Wildlife Trust and Bristol Climate and Nature Partnership – a brilliant example of what genuine partnership can achieve.
Building something new, together
Charlee closed by introducing the Bristol Park Quality Plan, which we're developing with Bristol City Council as part of the Nature Towns and Cities project – the city's first shared, evidence-based definition of what a good park actually is. We are hosting workshops over the next two months to help shape this.
Community empowerment is where lasting stewardship comes from, she said. Improving access means designing for the real reasons people stay away, not just measuring distance. And neither one lasts at city scale without genuine partnership between communities and the public bodies who care for this land.
