Making ecosystem restoration visible: Meet the Stewards of Nature reporting tool
1. Why transparency matters in restoration
Restoration rarely happens where most people can see it. The work is often remote, seasonal, and spread across large landscapes. That distance can make the positive impact hard to understand, even for the people who care most about it.
Partners want to see how action translates into ecological benefit. Landowners want to know what is happening on their sites. Corporate clients and stakeholders need timely, trustworthy data that shows progress without waiting months for reports.
We built the Stewards of Nature Reporting Tool for exactly these reasons. It is part of our commitment to give our partners, customers, landowners, and stakeholders a clear way to see what’s happening on the ground.
2. What the Reporting Tool is — and why we built it
The Reporting Tool is a shared, interactive dashboard that brings Stewards of Nature’s restoration activities into one accessible place.
It is designed to help explore our work in an interactive manner and understand the connection between clearing invasive alien plants and the plausible socio-economic and ecological gains that follow.
At its core, the tool allows users to:
View restoration sites and activities on an interactive map.
See what type of invasive species have been cleared, where, and when.
Understand how much biomass was harvested and how many pellets were produced.
Track how invasives clearing translates into measurable water benefits.
We believe restoration should not be a black box. If the goal is to rebuild ecosystems, then the evidence of that work must be visible, consistent, and easy to follow. This tool helps make that possible.
3. What you’ll find inside: harvesting activities and water impact
Harvesting activities
The harvesting dashboard shows the practical backbone of our work. It maps where harvesting has taken place or is planned and lists the invasive alien species identified at each site. For each species, it explains why it poses a threat and reports how much biomass has been felled and harvested.
Over time, this same activity layer will also connect to biodiversity and socio-economic outcomes, so that the full story of restoration can be tracked from action to impact.
Key features include:
Interactive site map
Users can explore our restoration footprint visually. Sites are mapped so you can move from a big-picture view into a specific area of work.
Site-specific information
Each site includes key details such as the site number, cleared area, and dominant invasive species. This gives landowners and partners a grounded sense of what is happening in each location.
Invaded vs. cleared overview
The tool keeps a running comparison of invaded versus cleared area. For example, you can see the current scale of the challenge alongside the progress made to date (for instance, 2.35K hectares invaded and 1K hectares cleared). These numbers are updated regularly as work continues and the hectares invaded within the Stewards of Nature scope is expected to expand over time.
Biomass felled and pellets produced
Users can track the volume of biomass removed and how many pellets are being produced. Stewards of Nature enables this production by making biomass available to partners, as our core activity is added-value harvesting.
Water impact
Clearing invasive alien plants also implies restoring the water balance of catchments and landscapes. Invasive species often use significantly more water than native vegetation, which reduces streamflow and groundwater recharge over time.
Our reporting tool includes a water impact dashboard that shows how clearing work translates into water gains. Stewards of Nature is working towards the restoration of the watershed in its FSC-certified areas in the Eastern Cape of South Africa since 2024, with estimated and validated water savings which will be verified by 2026.
In this section, users can see:
Annual water productivity
Users get a clear view of how water benefits build over time as clearing expands and sites begin to recover.
Estimated total water gains by site
Users can explore water gains at the site level, not only across the portfolio. This makes results tangible and geographically grounded.
Over time, the data also highlights an important landscape reality. Water gains per hectare can vary widely, just as biomass cleared per hectare can vary widely. These underlying differences are one reason it is difficult to assign a single fixed price per cubic meter of water saved. Every site is unique, and we account for characteristics such as the biome, level of invasion, types of water-thirsty trees, and the site’s specific runoff. The tool makes this variance visible, so impact is understood in context, rather than averaged into something potentially misleading.
Catchment and location
Users can compare estimated water gains across catchments under different inputs. They can also see how close validated sites are to their own area of operation or interest.
4. How partners can use the tool
The Reporting Tool is built for shared understanding. Different partners will use it in different ways, but everyone gets a clearer connection between action and outcome.
Landowners can see progress on their sites without needing to wait for a separate update. They can track which areas have been cleared, how much biomass has been removed, and how their land is moving toward recovery.
Corporate customers and partners can understand the volume of biomass cleared and the ecological return linked to that work, especially water benefits. The tool gives a straightforward view of operational scale, progress, and impact. It also shows which sites and areas generate the strongest water gains, helping partners see where restoration delivers the greatest return.
Partners receive access once a collaboration is confirmed and reporting is in place. Access is shared through a secure link or login, depending on the partner’s needs. At this stage, the tool provides an overview of key Stewards of Nature activities across the portfolio. Over time, we may introduce partner-specific views so customers can see their own contribution more directly, for example through hectares funded, sites supported, or linked water gains.
5. What’s next: building a full impact framework
The reporting tool is the first layer of a fuller impact system we’re building. Our goal is to connect on-the-ground action to clear, decision-ready evidence of what restoration is achieving: both for nature and for the people investing in recovery.
Next, we’ll keep strengthening the data behind the tool and expand it to include biodiversity and socio-economic outcomes alongside water. As that picture fills out, we’ll move toward impact claims that are measurable, credible, and eventually verifiable.
We’re already working on better ways to gather and retrieve field data to support this. The work is long-term, so the reporting needs to be long-term too - practical for decision-making, and transparent enough to keep credibility.