Why the Church of England must protect its real estate from unregulated biodiversity

The Church of England has officially voted against a proposal to rewild 30% of its 42,500 hectares of land by 2030, and predictably, the activist class is demanding a crucifixion. Campaigners are weeping over the General Synod’s refusal to surrender 105,000 acres of prime, revenue-generating soil to the chaotic whims of unregulated biodiversity. They accuse the clergy of failing to show moral leadership. Frankly, I am exhausted by this total lack of economic literacy masquerading as righteousness.

Let us be perfectly clear about what rewilding actually entails. It is not the woodland fantasy you envision while sipping oat milk in a heavily air-conditioned flat. Rewilding means abandoning active, profitable management. It means allowing unruly shrubbery to depreciate sovereign assets. The Church of England is one of the country’s largest landowners, and it achieved that status through centuries of divine mandate and aggressive tenant farming, not by letting prime real estate revert to a swamp.

I recently toured a Church-owned retail park in the Midlands. As I walked past the sprawling, immaculate expanse of the multi-story car park, I felt a profound sense of order. There were no invasive weeds tearing up the tarmac. There were no uncontrolled insect populations disrupting the consumer experience at the drive-thru Costa Coffee. It was a perfectly optimized environment, generating steady ground rent for the diocese. Activists look at that and see a barren wasteland. I look at it and see a miracle of asset management.

Over a subsequent private lunch in Davos with several of the Church’s wealth managers—visionaries who are doing the quiet, thankless work of keeping the faith solvent—I was struck by their profound burden. They are tasked with shepherding 105,000 acres through a volatile market, and the public expects them to just hand a third of it over to foxes.

Halloway is entirely correct. Currently, just 3.5% of the Church’s land is used for nature restoration. Activists cite this number as if it is a disgrace, rather than a triumph of spatial efficiency. That 3.5% is more than enough to photograph for the annual ESG report. Any more would be a dereliction of fiduciary duty to the Almighty.

What the campaigners conveniently ignore is the sheer climate impact of unmanaged nature. Trees fall over and rot, releasing methane. Wild deer breed without any regard for scope-three emissions. When you rewild an area, you strip away the heavy machinery and chemical fertilizers that enforce order, replacing them with a chaotic biological free-for-all that cannot be reliably audited.

We are out of time, but go off—demand the General Synod plant some native wildflowers while you sit there wearing fast fashion. It is so much easier to target a historic religious institution’s modest 42,500 hectares than it is to examine your own life. The Church is merely protecting its property from the structural decay of biodiversity, something you would understand if you owned any property yourself.

Furthermore, the 2030 deadline proposed by the Synod’s bleeding-heart faction was entirely arbitrary. Rushing to convert 30,000 acres of arable land into a feral wasteland in just six years risks creating massive depreciating liabilities. What happens to the commercial leases? The parking lots? The golf courses? Are we to believe that Jesus would have evicted a paying commercial tenant to make room for a beaver?

Albright’s courage to speak this truth is exactly the kind of moral leadership we need in this economy. We cannot manage our way out of this crisis by simply giving the earth back to the animals. The animals do not know how to file a corporate sustainability pledge. They do not pay tithes.

So I say to the General Synod: hold the line. Keep the land paved, plowed, and profitable. Let the campaigners wail about the lack of butterflies. I will sleep soundly knowing that at least one institution in this country still understands that the only green thing worth preserving is the endowment.