Professor David Hill CBE

David Arnold Hill CBE DL DPhil(Oxon) (born April 1958) is a British ecologist, campaigner for nature markets and biodiversity conservation, writer and wildlife photographer. After graduating with a 1st class honours in Animal and Plant Ecology, Hill undertook a doctorate on the population dynamics of wildfowl at the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. Hill is founder of the Foundation For Nature, a not-for profit community interest company building a global Ratings Agency for nature restoration projects providing greater clarity and certainty to investors and site operators in order to leverage more effective finance into the natural environment. He is the founder and previously Chair of The Environment Bank Ltd and co-founder of the NatureSpace Partnership Ltd that creates habitat for protected species. Hill was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2015 for services to nature conservation and the economy.

Career After Oxford, Hill became a research biologist with the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (previously the Game Conservancy), where he researched gamebird biology, publishing numerous scientific papers, books and articles. In 1986 he joined the RSPB as Senior Ecologist, responsible for the science on all RSPB reserves, before becoming a Director of the British Trust for Ornithology. His books include The Pheasant: Ecology, Management and Conservation (Blackwell Scientific Publications), Bird Census Techniques (Academic Press), Managing Habitats for Conservation (Cambridge University Press) and The Handbook of Biodiversity Methods: Survey, Evaluation and Monitoring (Cambridge University Press).

Having spent over 10 years in the environmental NGO sector, Hill created an ecological services business to support growing private sector demand for environmental expertise associated with the expansion of environmental regulations including emerging environmental and ecological impact assessment, emanating from both domestic legislation and the European Commission Until this point, ecology had been the domain of conservation organisations and government agencies such as the Nature Conservancy Council (which later became English Nature, that then merged with the Countryside Agency and Rural Development Service to form Natural England in 2006). In 1992 Hill established one of the first environmental consultancies in the UK (Ecoscope Applied Ecologists) which attained significant organic growth over the following 10-year period. Hill advised major consultancy projects in the built development sector including housing, logistics, road and rail infrastructure, waste management, water supply, and energy including renewables. He also advised the European Commission on the operation of the EU Wild Birds and Habitats Directives, especially in relation to the design of mitigation and compensation projects associated with built development and infrastructure. Ecoscope’s office in Hong Kong advised the Hong Kong government in respect of planning and biodiversity conservation.

In 2001 Hill merged Ecoscope with a large multidisciplinary environmental services business (RPS Group plc) spending four years as Chief Scientific Adviser to the Group and managing their diverse environment portfolio. In 2006 he founded the Environment Bank through which he developed the concept of biodiversity offsetting and biodiversity net gain (BNG) which, through his lobbying of government, was mandated into planning law through the Environment Act 2021. BNG is globally the first compliance-based market in biodiversity and is now transforming how biodiversity is treated within the planning system, leveraging significant funding into restoring nature and enhancing the natural environment. Over the past decade Hill has written extensively on the role of BNG to create more nature reserves (1, 2), to work with regenerative agriculture to restore biodiversity at scale, on the critical importance of making nature economically visible rather than being treated as a ‘nice-to-have’, and on building the ecological restoration industry, creating high quality jobs whilst restoring whole ecosystems, protecting our economy as a result (3, 4). Most recently, Hill writes on the role of environmental and nature markets in filling the nature finance gap (5), of critical importance given the acknowledged significance of natural capital in underpinning more than 55% of global GDP

Hill’s career trajectory has been exceptional in the field of ecology – moving from the environmental NGO sector to establishing a private sector ecological business, to working on the design and promotion of one of the most significant policy initiatives in nature conservation (BNG) since the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, to raising private finance to create habitat banks to service the demand in BNG units from the development industry. His lobbying for BNG to be mandated in law moved the treatment of biodiversity in the planning system from failure because it was not taken seriously, to a materially important concern that unless properly accounted for, results in planning permission being refused. As Hill says “Until the advent of biodiversity net gain, developers never considered biodiversity properly, almost all mitigation schemes resulted in failure for biodiversity, and local government never enforced their permissions. Now, developers must take biodiversity seriously because there is a legally binding mechanism to ensure they comply with the Environment Act”. Hill has presented ecological and nature market evidence on numerous occasions to the Government’s Environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Environmental Audit Committee and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Biodiversity.

Career chronology (current positions highlighted) • Founder, the Foundation For Nature (2024 - present) • Board member of the Woodland Trust (2025 – present). • Board member of the Lower Ure Conservation Trust (2025 – present). • Board member of the Science Board of Fera (2023 – present). • Co-founder, The NatureSpace Partnership Ltd (2018 – present). • Board Trustee of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation (2017 – present). • Chair of the conservation charity Curlew Action (2025 – present). • Commissioner with the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (2018 – 2025). • Chairman of Defra-backed Northern Upland Nature Partnership comprising Yorkshire Dales and Northumberland National Parks, Nidderdale, North Pennines and Forest of Bowland National Landscapes (2012 – 2025). • Chairman and founding owner of The Environment Bank Ltd (2006- May 2024). • Chairman of Plantlife International (2015 – 2023). • Board Member (2006 – 2016) and Deputy Chairman (2011 - 2016) of Natural England, the Government’s statutory advisers on the natural environment. • Member of the Board of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), (2006 - 2016) which coordinates the science of nature conservation across the devolved administrations including the UK Overseas Territories. • Member of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committees of Natural England (2006 – 2016) and JNCC (2006 – 2013). • Member of the JNCC strategic review Board (2015 – 2016). • Chairman of Natural England’s Board Innovation Group (2013 – 2016). • Board member of the National Association of Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (2013 – 2016). • Chairman of Natural England’s Developer Industry Group (2011 – 2016). • Co-chair of the Environment Agency/ Natural England/ Forestry Commission Triennial Review Board on behalf of Defra (2012-2014). • Member of the Government’s Ecosystem Markets Taskforce (2011 – 2013). • Chairman of Natural England’s strategic direction refresh (2009-2013). • Chairman of Natural England’s Board Outcome Group on Sustainable Development (2006 – 2011).

Eary life and family

David Arnold Hill was born on 18th April 1958 in Derby, Derbyshire and grew up in a suburb of the city. He is the eldest of two children. His early memories are of two very supportive parents neither of whom had benefitted from a university education. Hill remembers telling them that he had successfully gained a place at university to study ecology upon which they replied “that’s marvellous, well done, what is ecology?” It was 1976 and ecology hadn’t developed into the widely studied and crucially important subject that it is today.

From the age of five his parents encouraged his interest in the outdoors. He recounts that “my first pair of binoculars were second-hand and nearly as big as me – I think they were for spotting submarines in the war!”. Every spare day was spent birdwatching (now called birding of course), writing notes, cycling to remoter parts of Derbyshire, learning about farming, land use and the fabric of the countryside and its history. A notable event was encouraging his father to take him to find a rarely seen species at the time, the Osprey, at Swithland reservoir at the age of seven. Now Ospreys occur regularly across Britain, numbers having bounced back after years of persecution and damaging pesticides used in agriculture, the residues of which entered the food change of birds of prey causing egg-shell thinning and population crashes. Hill was born 16 years after the publication of the transformational book Silent Spring (6) by Rachel Carson that documented the horrendous impacts of pesticides (herbicides and insecticides) on farmland wildlife. Together with the later use of fungicides and a whole range of technological ‘advances’ in farming such as different cropping patterns and a move away from mixed farms involving livestock and crops to cereal monocultures, increasing field size and habitat removal including hedgerows, woodlands, heathlands and copses, deep ploughing, wetland drainage, and mechanisation, the 1960’s and 70’s when Hill was growing up, were a time of severe and rapid impacts on farmland wildlife. Hill recalls in the late 1960’s collecting a sack of weed seeds from off an old combine harvester that he took back home to feed to the birds in his garden. It would be impossible to collect the same amount of wildflower seed over a whole farm nowadays he says.

Hill was educated at Noel Baker School in Derby and focussed most of his time on engaging with nature. This passion led him to study a first degree in Animal and Plant Ecology at the University of Loughborough from 1976-79 (as one of the only universities at the time that had a course dedicated to ecology). During this time, he learnt about the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at the University of Oxford being the premier place to research the ecology of bird populations. A timely advertisement in New Scientist journal for a 3-year research studentship with the Game Conservancy (now known as the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust) created an opportunity for Hill to study at the EGI at Oxford, (1979-82). Hill met a number of people at Oxford who had written the very books that had inspired him as a child, including Sir Peter Scott and ornithologist Bruce Campbell. Further inspiration came from many other academics at Oxford at the time including an elderly Charles Elton (Eltonian cycles) who he met one day in the Zoology department library, his doctorate superviser and Director of the EGI Chris Perrins, Sir Richard Southwood, Richard Dawkins, David Macdonald, Bob May, Tim Birkhead and many more. Other remarkable and accomplished ornithologists and ecologists that influenced Hill’s career included John Lawton (his external examiner), Ian Newton and Dick Potts. Potts became Hill’s mentor at the Game Conservancy and a lifelong friend and he has been lucky to have maintained some contact with Professor Chris Perrins, Professor Ian Newton and Professor Sir John Lawton in recent years.

Views and advocacy

Hill’s initial period of research focussed largely on the population dynamics of birds to answer questions about how best to manage habitats to increase their abundance. Having built up significant research expertise across a range of species, habitats and situations, he devoted his time to creating a disruptive consultancy that would challenge built developments and the planning system to protect biodiversity or to directly compensate for unavoidable impacts. He helped develop policy frameworks to improve requirements on developers and ensure they effectively navigated the EU Wild Birds and Habitats Directives, the net effect being an improvement in the way biodiversity conservation was managed within the environmental impact assessment process. His consultancy, Ecoscope Applied Ecologists, was grounded in high ecological integrity backed up by solid research and scientific evaluation.

However, despite over 10 years of designing mitigation schemes for developments it became clear to Hill that a) reluctance on the part of developers to implement effective mitigation once planning permission had been received and b) inability of planning authorities to enforce non-compliance with supposedly legally binding commitments from the developer, was preventing biodiversity to be properly accounted for. He therefore established the Environment Bank to bring the idea of a compliance-based offsetting regime to the UK. At the time, global offsetting approaches were developing and a group ‘the Business and Biodiversity Offsets Partnership – BBOP’ was instrumental in spreading the value of offsetting to a wide audience including corporate business. In the UK Hill advocated for a legally binding mechanism whereby developers would measure the impacts of their developments on biodiversity using a metric, enabling compensation for those impacts to be carried out away from the development site, where there would be real and measurable gains to biodiversity. Using grant funding from the Shell Foundation and others, together with funding from his consultancy, Hill pioneered the creation of habitat banks, parcels of land leased from farmers and landowners, on which habitat creation works would yield units that could be purchased by the developer to enable their project to be policy compliant. Whilst Hill’s original idea for the Environment Bank was to buy land, uplift its biodiversity value through habitat creation and long-term management, and sell units to developers, this proved difficult because a) farmland rarely came on to the market, b) if it did it was almost always in the wrong place to deliver offsets local to where the development was taking place.

Hill spent considerable time creating the operating framework for the Environment Bank model. He was asked by government to join a board of environmental and business professionals to form the Ecosystem Markets Taskforce (EMTF), charged with working up a suite of ideas that could provide a market for nature-based solutions. The EMTF was chaired by Sir Ian Cheshire, CEO of the Kingfisher Group at the time, and the first of a series of recommendations was to make biodiversity offsetting mandatory. The details were published in the EMTF report of 2013 (7). However, both government and industry were slow to move on the recommendation, preferring biodiversity offsetting to operate on a voluntary basis. Six pilots of the concept were developed in association with local wildlife trusts and local planning authorities. The voluntary nature of the scheme meant that the concept never took off and only one of the pilots (the one in which Environment Bank were involved) delivered an effective habitat bank. Hill’s team therefore worked with Defra to design a detailed metric (8) for the calculation of impacts and morphed offsetting (which was seen as a toxic word) into biodiversity net gain in which development would be required to increase biodiversity value by a minimum of 10% above the baseline as a result of that development. By this time Hill suggested to Natural England, of which he was now Deputy Chair, that they establish two new bodies – the Board Innovation Group and the Developer Industry Group, both of which he chaired on behalf of the Natural England Board. At the same time, he continued to lobby government to make BNG mandatory. By 2019 the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond announced in the Queens speech that BNG was to be mandated into law through the passing of the Environment Act in 2021. However, it took a further two years for BNG to be implemented in order to give developers and planning authorities time to adjust to the new regime. In practice, as Hill predicted, neither of these groups prepared for the introduction of BNG until approximately 3 months before the implementation deadline. In the meantime, Hill spent a considerable amount of time speaking about BNG through webinars, meetings with developers, planners, planning consultants, conservationists, farmers, landowners and landholders, and legal Counsel.

With his interests in the land-based industries including farming and nature conservation, Hill developed ideas as to how BNG could create a blueprint for an even larger market for ecosystem restoration based on the disclosure of impacts on nature and natural capital by corporate (non-developer) businesses. The Taskforce for Nature-Related Financial Disclosures is working up a regime in which corporate businesses would, if mandated, be required to measure, disclose, account for and reduce the impacts of their business on natural capital. Through pressure from investors, shareholders and customers, Hill believes that corporate businesses, once they have disclosed their dependency and hence risks to biodiversity (as a result of its decline), will, through good business sense, buy into ecosystem restoration projects. Their buy-in would be recognised on their balance sheets and in their annual and financial reports. In so doing, a substantial market for ecological restoration will be created. It is these nature markets that is currently exercising Hill’s time – how to develop them, how to recognise good practice and how to reward corporates for doing so. Hence, he founded the Foundation For Nature as the first global Ratings Agency for nature restoration projects. It is envisaged that FFN will provide greater certainty and clarity to investors that their funding will be effective in delivering high quality nature restoration at scale. It will also signal higher levels of attainment to providers of ecological restoration sites, and differentiate between sites of high and low quality, thereby maintaining and improving the integrity of the market in nature restoration.

FFN’s ambitions have been welcomed across the land-based sectors, with banking institutions, insurance companies, landowners/farmers and corporate businesses aligned around the need for a means by which restoration site quality can be differentiated and recognised, making effective investment and purchases simpler.

Personal life

In 1989 Hill married Dr Kathleen Raw and they have one son (a drone film-maker) and two daughters (an architect and a veterinary surgeon). Hill lives with his family at their farm in the Nidderdale National Landscape (the whole farm is dedicated to conservation) and they also have a small farm in the Yorkshire Dales National Park which includes part of the Muker Meadows SSSI and Special Area of Conservation (a site of European conservation importance), listed as one of the nation’s 60 Coronation Meadows, an initiative instigated by King Charles III when he was HRH The Prince of Wales.

Achievements, awards and recognition

Hill’s lifetime contribution to ecological science, conservation management, planning and development, and recognition of nature finance and how to achieve it, has brought him international recognition. He serves on a high nature credit working group hosted by an organisation based in Washington DC, and he has spoken in the US, Scandinavia and Europe on nature markets. He has served on numerous boards and working groups concerned with biodiversity conservation and sustainability across public, private and NGO sectors. Major achievements include having established one of the first environmental consultancies in the UK followed by a merger with a multidisciplinary PLC; establishment of the Environment Bank, building scale and attracting £ hundreds of millions of private equity investment before stepping down as executive chair to enable the creation of the first Ratings Agency for nature restoration with an ambition to raise the quality of restoration sites based around ecological integrity and science, financial integrity, security and probity, governance and community benefits.

Hill was awarded the CBE in the Queen’s birthday honours 2015 for services to nature conservation and the economy. He was made a Deputy Lieutenant of North Yorkshire in 2020. He is an avid birder and wildlife photographer.

Honorary titles

Hill was appointed a visiting professor at Oxford Brookes University (2005).

Recognition

Hill was recognised as one of the 100 most influential environmental professionals by the ENDS Report in 2022.

Awards

2015 Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) For services to nature conservation and the economy 2014 Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management Best Practice Awards For the Abberton Reservoir scheme 2013 Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management Best Practice Awards For best written article – Biodiversity offsetting CIEEM In Practice 81, p7-11. September 2013.

Bibliography

Hill’s research publications have covered subjects including seabird population ecology, breeding waterfowl on gravel quarries, bird population dynamics, foraging behaviour and time budgets, gamebird ecology on arable farmland, stonechat surveying and conservation in the Canary Islands, woodland conservation, coppicing and management for invertebrates and birds, impacts of grazing on woodland bird communities, impacts of land use change and predation on bird populations, early use of radiotelemetry techniques, use of population modelling in conservation, breeding bird communities in native pine forests, effects of disturbance on birds and the role of EIA’s in the development sector, winter shorebird communities on UK estuaries, designing managing and enhancing farm woods, ecological census methods, managing habitats for conservation, bird census techniques, and biodiversity methods in survey, evaluation and monitoring.

Some specific scientific papers, books and book chapters include :

Hill, D.A. (1984) Population regulation in the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos L.). Journal of Animal Ecology 53, 192-202. Hill, D.A. (1985). The feeding ecology and survival of pheasant chicks on arable farmland. Journal of Applied Ecology 22, 645-654. Hill, D.A. (1986). In The Fuerteventura Stonechat Survey. International Council for Bird Preservation, Study Report No. 8. Bibby, C.J. & Hill, D.A. (1987). The status and distribution of the Fuerteventura Stonechat (Saxicola dacotiae). Ibis 129, 491-498. Hill, D.A. & Ridley, M.W. (1987). Sexual segregation in winter, spring dispersal and habitat use in the pheasant (Phasianus colchicus). Journal of Zoology 212, 657-668. Hill, D.A. (1988). Population dynamics of avocets (Recurvirostra avosetta L.) breeding in Britain. Journal of Animal Ecology 57, 669-683. Hill, D.A. & Robertson, P.A. (1988). Breeding success of wild and hand-reared ring-necked pheasants (Phasianus colchicus). Journal of Wildlife Management 52, 446-450. Hill, D.A., Roberts, P. & Stork, N. (1990). Densities and biomass of invertebrates in stands of rotationally managed coppice woodland. Biological Conservation 51, 167-176. Hill, D.A, Taylor, S, Thaxton, R, Amphlet, A. & Horn, W. (1990). Breeding bird communities of native pine forest, Scotland. Bird Study 37, 133-141. Hill, D.A. & Carter, N. (1991). Development of an empirical simulation model of an avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta L.) population. Ornis Scandanavica 22, 65-72. Hill, D.A., Lambton, S., Bullock, I., & Proctor, I. (1991). Winter bird communities in woodland in the Forest of Dean and some implications of livestock of grazing. Bird Study 38, 57-70. Hill, D.A., Rushton, S., Green, P., Clark, N. & Prys-Jones, R. (1993). Shorebird communities on British estuaries: I. Factors affecting community composition. Journal of Applied Ecology 30, 220-234. Hill, D., Hockin, D., Price, D. Tucker, G. Morris, R. & Treweek, J. (1997). Bird disturbance: improving the quality and utility of disturbance research. Journal of Applied Ecology 34, 275-288. Hill, D.A. with Pain, D.J. & McCracken, D.I. (1997). Impact of agricultural intensification of pastoral systems on bird distribution in Britain, 1970-1990. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 64, 19-32. Hill, D.A. with Bennett, A. & Watson, D. (2001). Water Voles and development – a case study of mitigation techniques. British Wildlife 12, 167 – 172. Hill, D.A. & Robertson, P.A. (1988). The Pheasant : Ecology, Management and Conservation. Pub. Blackwells, Oxford, 290pp. Hill, D.A. (1989). The Avocet. Shire Natural History Publications. Bibby, C.J., Burgess, N. & Hill, D.A. (1992). Bird Census Techniques. Academic Press, London, 258 pp. Hill, D.A. with Sutherland, W.J. (1995). Managing Habitats for Conservation. Cambridge University Press, 399pp. Bibby, C.J., Burgess, N., Hill, D.A. & Mustoe, S. (2000). Bird Census Techniques. Academic Press, London, 302 pp. 2nd edition. Hill, D. A. (2001). Highways and Birds. A guidance of best practice. Published by Ecoscope on behalf of the Highways Agency. 74pp. Hill, D.A., Fasham, M., Tucker, G., Shewry, M. & Shaw, P. (2005). The Handbook of Biodiversity Methods: Survey, Evaluation and Monitoring. Cambridge University Press. 573pp. Hill, D. & Gillespie, R. (2009). Habitat banking is the future of nature conservation in the UK. Guardian.co.uk. 16 November 2009. Hill, D. & Arnold, R. (2012). Building the evidence base for ecological impact assessment and mitigation. Journal of Applied Ecology 49. 6-9. Hill, D. (2013). Biodiversity Offsetting. CIEEM In Practice. p7-11. September 2013. Hill, D. (2018) Restoration of Biodiversity. CIEEM. In Practice. 100. p16-17. June 2018. Ridley, M. & Hill, D. (2018). The effect of innovation in agriculture on the environment. Institute of Economic Affairs. IEA Current Controversies 64. 107pp. Hill, D. (2019). Biodiversity net gain must lead to proper biodiversity restoration at scale. CIEEM. In Practice. 104. p22-23. June 2019. Hill, D. (2022). Financing nature recovery in the UK and the land sparing vs land sharing paradigm. Environment Bank Occasional Paper. September 2022. 14pp. Hill, D. A. (2024). Biodiversity Credits: An emerging market to restore nature. CIEEM In Practice. 125. p23-27. September 2024.

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References

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