Bupa Global & UK Legal Team Celebrates Successful Year by Planting Trees with Creating Tomorrow’s Forests

Many businesses are looking to nature-based solutions such as forest creation in order to contribute positively towards sustainability goals. In order to mark the end of a successful year, the Bupa Global & UK Legal team took the innovative approach of deciding to plant a tree for every legal matter they handled in a new Dorset woodland complex. The initiative planted an amazing 1884 trees on the site in total, making an invaluable contribution to fighting climate change, increasing woodland cover, and restoring our wild spaces. The team has made a similar pledge to link this year’s legal work to biodiversity and habitat creation, ensuring that the initiative continues contributing to nature restoration.

The Bupa Global & UK Legal team recently joined Creating Tomorrow’s Forests in Dorset to see the results of their contribution on the ground, which is one of the real advantages of funding UK based projects. They even planted some of the trees themselves with some expert tuition from Elisabeth Boivin, one of the company directors. The day started with a sunny guided walk through the neighbouring SSSI meadows and woodland, then the team planted trees and had a tour of the planting site. The site boasts a 1.2 hectare lake which is humming with dragonflies and damselflies, and has been carefully designed to maximise biodiversity. The lake is surrounded by a wildflower meadow and patches of woodland planting to diversify the site and provide extra habitat for wildlife.

Increasing biodiversity is one of the cornerstones of the Creating Tomorrow’s Forests approach as the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. On all our projects we aim to create thriving ecosystems to restore nature. The lake site has already recorded rare water voles and slow worms, so the Bupa trees will help to improve the habitat even further for wildlife.

One of the directors of Creating Tomorrow’s Forests, Elisabeth Boivin explained how important business funding is in recovering our lost habitats: “One of the greatest pleasures of the work that we do is being able to show our partners the results of their funding. Being able to see the tangible impact that they are having on the natural world is very powerful and it was fantastic to have the Bupa Global & UK Legal team here with us on the ground. Business funding is not only vital to the work that we do but essential for the businesses themselves. With nature under threat globally, it is essential that businesses begin operating in a more sustainable and nature-focused manner, and our projects allow businesses to fund nature restoration directly. We look forward to developing our partnership with Bupa Legal and taking them on the biodiversity restoration journey.”

Stuart Brown (General Counsel of Bupa Global & UK Legal team) added that "We are incredibly fortunate to work for Bupa, an organisation that is driven by a strong Purpose - "to help people live longer, healthier, happier lives and making a better world". That strong purpose drives not just what we do but how we do it, and that extends to our Legal team. In the Bupa Global & UK Legal team, we pledged to plant a tree for every new legal matter that our team advised on last year."

Creating Tomorrow’s Forests partners with businesses to transform their investment in nature into thriving ecosystems. To find out more about the work that we do and how we can benefit your business, have a look at our project pages.