Scotland's nature crisis: Delivering at scale

In May 2019, the Buccleuch estate in the south of Scotland put around 25,000 acres of land up for sale. The land next to Langholm had belonged to the Duke of Buccleuch, whose family has owned vast areas of Scotland since the 17th century.  

Historically used for grouse shooting, farming, and forestry, the land has been in a state of decline for quite some time. In addition to the economic downturn from the winding down of grouse shooting, the land had experienced its fair share of ecological loss. Many of the native birds had long left the area, while peatland was drying out thanks to artificial drainage.  

In a move that has begun to regenerate the land and the economy of the ancient burgh, which lost many jobs through the decline of the textile industry, the Langholm Initiative, a local development trust constituted to explore new economic opportunities for the Langholm residents, launched a campaign to buy a portion of the site for community ownership in 2019. 

Jenny Barlow, the estate manager for the trust, said it had been exploring eco-tourism avenues for the community before the land went up for sale. She describes it as “a once-in-a-lifetime window to catalyse new opportunities for the area”.  

The Langholm Initiative aimed to raise £3.8m by October 2020. It secured funding from the Scottish Land Fund, South of Scotland Enterprise, and thousands of individuals and conservation groups worldwide, and the first 5,200-acre section was purchased in October 2020. 

The land was renamed Tarras Valley Nature Reserve, signifying its transformation into a community-owned nature reserve focused on large-scale ecosystem restoration, conservation, and sustainable development aimed at improving the rural economy of the area.  

A further £2.2m was raised in 2021, and in May the following year a second buyout secured an additional 5,300 acres. The two transactions are now considered amongst Scotland’s largest and most ambitious community land buyouts ever.  

The plan is not to set rigid targets. For example, it won’t set out to plant a specific number of trees within a defined timeframe. Instead, the Langholm Initiative is taking a more holistic approach to restoring the biodiversity of the land. The first challenge it sought to tackle was restoring the natural hydrology and removing hundreds of miles of artificial drains that are causing the peatland to dry out. This month the community has begun blocking off around 50 kilometres of ditches.

“We have a digger come in and it creates earth bunds [sloped embankments], blocking up the drainage, which allows the water to rise,” Barlow says. “Doing this, we are removing a good deal of risk of downstream flooding in the winter and the risk of wildfires in the summer, and creating much more wetland habitat in the uplands, more spaces for wading birds, insects and other aspects of biodiversity.” 

There’s a real excitement in the community. People are keen to see what comes back to the land once the natural hydrology has been fully restored. In the first five years of community ownership, efforts have resulted in the return of golden eagles and pine martens – two species that hadn’t been seen on the land in years, Barlow tells Holyrood.  

These efforts by the Langholm Initiative follow the change in messaging by the Scottish Government in recent years around the importance of tackling the nature crisis alongside the climate crisis.  

Steve Micklewright, the chief executive of Trees for Life – one of the largest organisations in Scotland working on rewilding, which is the umbrella term for ecological restoration aimed at increasing biodiversity and restoring natural processes – says the speed at which the government has begun to take the issue of the degradation of the land and waters “didn’t seem likely five years ago”. 

For many years the climate crisis had been on the lips of governments. The Scottish Government’s first formal climate policy, the Climate Change (Scotland) Act, was passed in 2009. At that time, Scotland was seen as one of the world’s most ambitious nations when it came to tackling climate change. Yet it took the government 10 years from the publication of the landmark bill to acknowledge the nature crisis. In 2019, it published a statement recognising the serious decline in biodiversity and the urgent need for action, declaring the climate emergency was linked to the biodiversity crisis.  

It followed a report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in May of that year, which issued a stern warning about the damage human beings are causing to the planet. It found one million species were at risk of extinction due to human activity and 85 per cent of wetlands had been lost since the 1700s, reducing a critical habitat for wildlife. 

In response to this, then climate change secretary Roseanna Cunningham told the Scottish Parliament in the same month that “it’s not too late for us to turn things around, but to do so requires transformative change”. 

In December of the following year, the Scottish Government begun referring to nature and climate as a twin crisis. Cunningham informed parliament of plans to protect at least 30 per cent of Scotland’s land for nature by 2030 and highlighted the interconnectedness of climate change and ecological decline. 

Figures from the Biodiversity Intactness Indicator found that Scotland had retained just over half of its historic land-based biodiversity, placing it in the bottom 25 per cent of nations worldwide. A total of 64 per cent of Scotland’s protected woodlands were found to be in a favourable or recovering condition and were identified as having the greatest potential to contribute to healthy ecosystems. 

Species loss is also a major concern, and the Scottish Government noted a 24 per cent decline in the average abundance of 352 terrestrial and freshwater species since 1994, adding that 1994 was not a high point. Concerningly, the abundance of 190 non-native established terrestrial, freshwater and marine species has increased in the last six decades. 

It was a bleak picture that was being painted alongside the climate crisis. In response, the Scottish Government developed its Biodiversity Strategy to 2045, which was published in 2022.

It is committed to improving the health, resilience and connectivity of the land and seascapes by restoring peatlands to retain carbon, forests, rivers and coastal habitats while expanding Protected Areas – national parks, Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), Marine Protected Areas – to 30 per cent by 2030. 

It also placed an emphasis on boosting species recovery by increasing the abundance of naturally significant animals such as wild salmon, capercaillie, and golden eagle. 

Trees for Life estimates that 2.5 per cent of Scotland is undergoing rewilding. Micklewright says, despite being far off the 30 per cent target, that is “a massive amount of work”.  

One of the big concerns about rewilding 30 per cent of Scotland’s land is the impact it could have on Scotland’s food production. The National Farmers Union (NFU) Scotland backs the Scottish Government’s biodiversity strategy. However, it has raised some concerns about the impact poor planning and underfunding can have on the agricultural sector as it coexists with increased levels of animals, reintroduced species, and restoration of natural processes.  

Speaking at the Royal Highland Show last year, the vice president of NFU Scotland, Alasdair Macnab, questioned whether rewilding efforts are “a step into relatively uncharted territory with largely unknown consequences for us and nature”. 

He stressed that any nature restoration efforts must be guided by sound science and long-standing agricultural practices. He raised concerns about fragmented approaches where policies target single issues, such as badgers, beavers, rewilding, and intensive agriculture, without considering nature as an interconnected biome. 

Macnab emphasised that nature restoration must be practical, deliverable, and aligned with sustainable farming and called for clear policies, incentives, and funding that enable farmers and crofters to continue their role as stewards of Scotland’s countryside, ensuring that restoration efforts benefit nature, agriculture, and society as a whole. 

Mickelwright describes the initial reintroduction of beavers to Tayside as “problematic”, particularly in terms of the impact it had on agriculture. It’s still unclear how or who released them, but the damage caused to farmland and crops has been well documented. “What needs to be learned from when beavers were reintroduced, and this goes for any other animals in the future, [is] it needs to be done in areas that are much lower risk to farming,” he says.

“Between Trees for Life and the Cairngorms National Park, we are developing support mechanisms so that if a species like beavers ever causes problems you can act quickly to mitigate against the problems they are causing. And it very rarely involves killing them.” 

He adds that the current set-up of subsidies for farmers does the opposite of promoting the idea of rewilding some portions of the land. “If you think about a farmer wanting to practically do rewilding, farming subsidies don’t encourage it. It focuses on agricultural production. And one of the big barriers to rewilding is that farmers will lose some of their area payments.” 

Micklewright is positive about the Scottish Government’s approach in recent years and says it “is absolutely aligned” to restoring Scotland’s biodiversity, but he says now it’s time for scale. “We need to be connecting large pockets of nature together so it can move around in response to the climate and can spread. The question is how we find that land and how do we demonstrate that by rewilding we all benefit everyone, including the farming community.” 

This will not be an easy task for the Scottish Government, as it already found out in its attempt to help marine ecosystems to recover. Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs), zoning that would restrict almost all fishing, aquaculture, and other human activities were touted under the biodiversity strategy. The proposed policy would have seen 10 per cent of Scotland’s waters designated as HPMAs by next year. However, the plans were shelved by the government after backlash from the fishing industry and coastal communities. 

It was a stark reminder that communities and industry must be brought along on the journey to restore Scotland’s biodiversity. And people can benefit from regeneration, Micklewright says. 
The Dundreggan Estate, near Loch Ness, which is owned by Trees for Life, is aiming to restore Scotland’s ancient Caledonian forest, which was heavily deforested over the last few centuries.

The benefits of planting thousands of Scots pine, birch, aspen, and rowan extend much wider than just restoring the forest. The project is creating a haven for important species such as the red squirrel, golden eagle, pine marten, wood ant, and the elusive Scottish wildcat, as well as supporting the UK’s most diverse moss and lichen. The impact on the community around the forest has led to an over 400 per cent uptick in employment as a result of rewilding efforts, according to Rewilding Britain.

“Nature restoration is creating more jobs, and they are rural and practical. That’s not to mention the tourism benefits, people want to visit natural landscapes,” Micklewright says. 

And Tarras Nature Valley Reserve, despite being in the early stages of its restoration, is already identifying opportunities for nature tourism that will create jobs and boost Langholm’s economy for future generations.  

Barlow says: “Around lockdown it became apparent that nature-based tourism was a big opportunity to boost the area, doing that in a sustainable, responsible way. And since the buyout there has been a lot of work in Langholm to improve visitor facilities and we are hoping to offer nature experiences and be responsive to a lot of the new tourism that’s coming into the area.
“That could be economically transformative for the community.”