| By Natasha White An experiment is underway at Castle Howard in Yorkshire, UK, the grand setting of Brideshead Revisited and the Netflix series Bridgerton. Ecologists are starting to restore a 178-hectare (440-acre) plot to use as the basis for a new kind of financial credit: "nature shares." The prospective buyers of these shares are companies under pressure to voluntarily report on, and mitigate, their impact on the natural world.  Yorkshire's Castle Howard Photographer: Mary Turner/Bloomberg The formerly farmed plot is a "fake habitat" largely devoid of biodiversity, according to Emma Toovey, chief ecology officer at Environment Bank, the company behind the project. But if all goes to plan, the fake habitat will become a real, lush one. Environment Bank and Castle Howard plan to till it and plant wildflowers. In the fields too rich from decades' worth of fertilizer, they'll sow hungry crops like oats or barley, which can suck up excess nutrients and return the soil to a gentler balance. Longhorn cows will be released to eat down the grass, turning the soil with their hooves. After 30-odd years, the diversity and abundance of flora and fauna is expected to have grown by at least 190%.  Land at Castle Howard that will be restored, with the Howard family mausoleum in the distance. Photographer: Mary Turner/Bloomberg Similar experiments are also in progress at King Charles III's Sandringham Estate and dozens of other locations around England to feed the country's new regulated market for biodiversity credits. "Broadly, we think the opportunity set is pretty big," said Peter Bachmann, managing director of sustainable infrastructure at asset manager Gresham House, Environment Bank's backer. But even as some financiers talk of habitat banks and nature shares, others are struggling to figure out how to make money from saving species. The level of demand for credits is unclear. And some critics say new nature markets are ultimately a distraction from the main task at hand: to stop financing activities, like forest-clearing agriculture and mining projects, that result in nature's destruction. Staving off that destruction will be the focus of the 16th United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in Cali, Colombia, next week. Two years ago, almost 200 governments signed the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which calls for countries to reverse the loss of nature by the end of the decade and to raise $700 billion a year for that purpose. In Cali, delegates will check in on progress; only 28 countries and the European Union so far have submitted their plans to meet the 2022 agreement. They'll also discuss how to fund conservation on a planetary scale, including via the biodiversity credits market and other "innovative schemes" such as green bonds.  Guy Thallon, head of natural environment at Castle Howard, assesses the undergrowth in an area of woodland where native animals will be reintroduced. Photographer: Mary Turner/Bloomberg For critics, though, as long as there's ample finance for industries that are ravaging nature, these innovations detract from trickier but more impactful tasks like redirecting harmful subsidies or placing curbs on destruction. More than 270 nonprofits, think tanks and academics recently signed an open letter expressing "grave concerns" about "risky" biodiversity credits, offsets and related trading mechanisms. There are also fears that the nascent market will follow the path of its older sister, the carbon credits market, which has all but crashed due to overblown claims. Bachmann of Gresham House acknowledged the shadow it casts. "Every corporate has been burned by carbon credits in some way," he said, so perceptions are "negative generally around nature markets. It's our job to regain trust, and demonstrate it works." Read the full story on Bloomberg.com. | 
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