Scotland's Nature Restoration Fund — National Grant Scheme for Habitat Recovery

Scotland's Nature Restoration Fund (NRF) is a Scottish Government programme, administered by the nature agency NatureScot, that has committed £65 million to nature recovery over 2021-2026.

It funds nearly 800 projects across Scotland's woodlands, rivers, peatlands, coasts and urban green spaces through two grant streams — 'Helping Nature' (£25,000-£250,000) and 'Transforming Nature' (£250,000 and above) — plus direct funding to local authorities.

An interim evaluation published in August 2025 recorded 15,427 hectares of habitat under active restoration, 216 km of linear habitat protected from invasive non-native species, 328,813 trees planted, 68.3 km of hedgerows created and over 282 hectares of pollinator habitat restored or created. A May 2025 milestone announcement separately reported that the £65 million invested to date had funded planting of over 300,000 trees and restoration of more than 1,800 hectares of urban greenspace.

As a grant-making fund distributing money across hundreds of independently delivered local projects rather than a single monitored intervention, the NRF relies substantially on grantee self-reporting rather than a uniform third-party monitoring protocol, and its interim evaluation does not yet quantify long-term ecological outcomes such as species population trends or carbon sequestration. The Scottish Government announced in 2026 that the fund would be extended into 2026-27 for a further round of multi-year projects.