A pioneering rewilding company has sold 19 hectares of its Highlands estate to the local community in what it describes as a “progressive model for community engagement”.
As well as rewilding, the community plans to build affordable housing and “reverse depopulation”.
Highlands Rewilding has completed the sale, at cost, of this small fraction of its 1370 hectare Tayvallich Estate to the local community body Tayvallich Initiative – and plans to make such land sales a “key part” of their model.
Jeremy Leggett, founder and CEO of the company, as well as a former Greenpeace director, said: "Where there is demand for community ownership of land we want to fulfil this part of our community prosperity aim, by empowering the community to own their own land.
“We see it as a win–win for both communities and private land owners working together to achieve joint aspirations for nature recovery and community prosperity.”
The sale follows the signing of a novel land management Memorandum of Understanding with the initiative.
Highlands Rewilding has also published a 'community engagement roadmap' and launched a 'community joint venture project which, it said, aims to “capitalise on environmental improvements from rewilding and the valuable ecosystem services they generate” and “develop community benefits from natural capital”.
READ MORE: Rewilding Scotland. Not just green lairds and capitalists
READ MORE: Rewilding estates of Scotland - trees, carbon, who owns them
READ MORE: New rewilding concept at heart of groundbreaking £20m Scottish deal
The buy-out also follows a successful bid to the Scottish Land Fund, which awarded Tayvallich Initiative £565,608 to fund the purchase of two plots of land at Turbiskill from Highlands Rewilding.
Tayvallich Initiative is currently focussing on applications for planning consent to build housing for affordable rent in the area, where population and school roll are low.
A spokesperson said, “Reversing depopulation and maintaining and developing employment in the area are key concerns, while also maintaining the area’s natural richness and responding and adapting to the climate and biodiversity emergencies.
"Our aspirations here align with Highlands Rewilding, and community ownership of Turbiskill, alongside the wider Tayvallich Estate management will help to enable these ambitions to be realised”.
The sale is not the first time that Highlands Rewilding has pioneered a new model or approach. When the company completed the purchase of Tayvallich in May 2023, it was financed by a successful crowdfunding campaign, in conjunction with private investment and a loan from the UK Infrastructure Bank: the first loan of its kind dedicated to nature recovery in the UK.
Jeremy Leggett has said: “The model Highlands Rewilding is pursuing is one that can attract investment into nature recovery at the scale desperately needed to halt biodiversity collapse, with the community invited to be part of this; second only to that within Community Land Trusts”.
Tayvallich is one of three estates owned by Highlands Rewilding - the two others are Bunloit and Beldorney - and the company recently published its third "natural capital report".
Data included comes from "open air laboratories" at its sites, which are attempting to develop "robust and scalable nature-based solutions through data collection and analysis from over 2000 hectares of land in Scotland."
This nature-based science, the company says, is a key ingredient to developing natural capital credits, including biodiversity uplift or for tracking carbon sequestration.
Mr Leggett said: “We are seeing markets emerge which have the potential to bring substantial investment into natural capital uplift, with a particular focus on carbon and biodiversity. It is vital that these markets are developed to ensure that any claims of uplift are accurately reflecting meaningful restorative action and producing valuable benefits to people. Our open air laboratories do just that. In everything we do, we’re aiming to demonstrate how natural capital can be verifiably for the planet, and for people.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel