The debate about the reintroduction of native species to our hills and glens has been reignited.

It follows confirmation that, after the best part of a decade, Paul Lister, the heir to the MFI furniture fortune, is still intent on having wolves and bears roaming free on his 23,000 acre Alladale Estate to the west of the Dornoch Firth.

But there are those who would like another debate about the return of a different native species - people.

To the likes of Community Land Scotland (CLS), the umbrella organisation for community buyouts which account for more than 500,000 acres of rural Scotland in places such as Eigg and Gigha, the fascination with such plans for Alladale is rather depressing.

"Oh for the day when the news that grips the popular imagination is that a Highland landowner wants to re-establish people on his vast estate," says Peter Peacock, one-time Scottish Education Minister who is CLS's policy director:

Despite the grandiose title, it is a part-time job that serves his sense of commitment better than his bank balance.

But he knows his way round government, which is important. He and CLS chairman, the Harris-based David Cameron, have been working on a range of policy ideas to inform the debate about land reform that is the subject of study at both Holyrood and Westminster.

Their idea of a Land Agency to mediate between landowners and communities mounting hostile buyouts has been taken on board by the Scottish Government's Land Reform Review Group.

But now we hear that Mr Cameron and Mr Peacock are examining the whole notion of the public interest, in relation to what is the most concentrated ownership of land in Europe. They have been searching in vain for a mechanism that might assess whether the public interest is served by the status quo on land ownership.

Yet there are public safeguards in many other areas. Ofcom tries to ensure media plurality so that no one media owner can be so dominant as to have undue power over what we read, hear and watch; all done in the public interest.

We have long had the Competition Commission and Office of Fair Trading (soon to be merged into the Competition and Markets Authority) to protect the public or consumers' interests in the face of commercial market dominance.

But when it comes to the most basic of resources, land,there is no watchdog protecting the public interest.

So it is understood that CLS is looking to develop its Scottish Land Agency idea with the body being given a monopolies commission-type role. Could the concept of a maximum land holding be about to be mooted?

But it appears the blue-sky thinking doesn't end there. It is also looking at the possible relevance to circumstances today of the Land Settlement (Scotland) Act of 1919.

Given that the legislation talks about land being "acquired compulsorily", wolves and bears might not be that controversial after all.