While EcoNorth keeps busy getting to grips with assessing plans and projects on a day to day basis, working to support our clients to stay compliant with relevant environmental legislation and deliver ecological benefits, it’s very easy to forget or lose sight of just why we came to exist and why we work hard at what we do.
In the most simple terms, EcoNorth is a wholly owned subsidiary of Northumberland Wildlife Trust (NWT) and can be found promoted on the NWT website (EcoNorth | Northumberland Wildlife Trust). This means that we operate as a limited company offering professional ecological services operating across a range of sectors, working both to align with the overall mission of Northumberland Wildlife Trust in Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland (Our Mission | Northumberland Wildlife Trust) but also the overall work of The Wildlife Trusts (TWT) nationally as 1 of 46 wildlife trusts across the UK.
EcoNorth supports the work of The Wildlife Trusts by:
- Providing professional ecological services directly to NWT such as habitat surveys and assessments of NWT landholdings.
- Working alongside NWT to deliver habitat creation and survey efforts on a large scale.
- Working with clients in the private sector to deliver wildlife gain as part of delivering some of the nation’s critical infrastructure such as roads and bridges, rail, power transmission, water services and flood resilience amongst many others.
- Generating profit throughout the course of our work which can then be gifted to NWT, providing unrestricted financial support to the operation of NWT and delivery of its mission.
Since being launched as EcoNorth Ltd in 2009 (previously existing as Northumberland Ecological Services in a quiet form) EcoNorth has grown from an organisation with a single employee with a modest turnover, following some investment into the consultancy by NWT, to an organisation with up to 18 employees and numerous subcontracted staff with a turnover of >£1million annually since 2022. The growth of the business has seen EcoNorth increase its financial support to NWT to £100,000 annually over the last 2 years with a total contribution of c£0.5million and rising.
Working for wildlife on two fronts makes EcoNorth, alongside our colleagues in other Wildlife Trust Consultancies, unique.