Meet Ian Crosher

I am a Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv) with the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM) with over 30 years experience encompassing many aspects of Ecology, Nature Recovery, Climate vulnerability and Carbon in Nature. Previously a Climate, Carbon, Peatland and Nature Recovery Specialist at Natural England (until 2025) with over a decade delivering agri-environment schemes.

I am a specialist in Climate Change with a recent focus around carbon in Nature. As well I have worked at a national strategic level on Biodiversity 2020 and Peatland Recovery, peat emissions and restoration. I developed much of the understanding and evidence base around carbon in nature and spatial data.

I have recommended ecosystem restoration on most habitats and locations around the UK, with a focus on uplands and peatlands. I surveyed habitats across Cumbria while working on the ESA & HLS schemes, later contributing to the Landscape Recovery scheme, through development of the scoring criteria particularly on carbon and climate resilience.

I spent a year developing the Net Gain Framework through Biodiversity Metric v2 (Crosher et. al. 2019), mainly on the technical ecological aspects, by adjusting the habitat classification, developing the time to target and habitat and feature condition.

I developed much of the ecological underpinning for the Nature Recovery Network which is built from the evidence in the Nature Networks Evidence Handbook. I helped create the Habitat Networks Maps to set out how habitat patches can be connected to spatial represent the ‘Making Space for Nature’ principles. Within Biodiversity 2020, I was the lead for Outcome 1D: Restoring at least 15% of degraded ecosystems as a contribution to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Throughout this I ran initial workshops that developed much of the work and concepts that help establish the natural ecosystem function principles and development of the floodplain wetland mosaic concepts.

I represented England on a number of EU work streams around Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) target 15 (now target 2, degraded ecosystems) of the CBD implementation 2011- 2020.

I wrote the initial study on the Cumbria High Fells Climate Change vulnerability Report then developed the NW Regional CC Vulnerability landscape Assessment.

I have written & developed the following published reports.

• Nature Net Zero (NECR 569) [2025]

• Climate Mitigation and England Peatlands (NERR142) [2025]

• Carbon Storage and Sequestration by Habitat 2021 (NERR094) [2021]

• Spatial Prioritisation of Land Management for Carbon Datasets [2023]

• Nature Networks Evidence Handbook (NERR081) [2020]

• The Biodiversity Metric 2.0 – Technical supplement (Crosher 2019, et. al)

• The Biodiversity Metric 2.0 – User Guide (Crosher 2019 et.al.)

• Habitat Network Maps – data layers and framework development.

• Developing Datasets for Biodiversity 2020: Outcome 1D