A rewilding project in the Scottish Highlands is “ramping up” its efforts after recruiting three new scientists.
Highlands Rewilding owns 682 hectares of land in Inverness-shire and Aberdeenshire, which it has dedicated to nature recovery.
It has now appointed two new co-chief scientists, Dr Penelope Whitehorn and Dr Calum Brown, who have collectively authored or co-authored 90 peer-reviewed scientific papers between them.
The group has also taken on a chief data scientist Cathy Atkinson, who has previously been awarded an OBE for her work in this area.
They will be supported by a team of 17, many of them trained ecologists, and all but three from or resident in the Highlands.
The appointments come as Highlands Rewilding also attempts to secure new funding, so it can both acquire more land and use what it describes as its “scientific and data firepower” to help other landowners benefit from more nature-friendly land management practices.
The organisation is seeking new investors and is also planning a crowdfunding initiative.
The 50 current co-owners are preparing to expand ownership by adding what they hope will be hundreds of retail investors in a campaign set to run for three months from December to February.
Highlands Rewilding founder and chair Dr Jeremy Leggett said as well as contributing towards climate change efforts, their work was also helping tackle “dire land inequality” in Scotland.
“In the first two years of this project, we have made a good start in rewilding science, land management for nature recovery, and community involvement.
“By ramping up all these in our third year, we are aiming for a meaningful contribution to the Scottish Government’s effort to hit its ambitious climate and biodiversity targets, while also helping with the dire land inequality problem in Scotland.”
Highlands Rewilding aims to scale nature recovery and community prosperity in two ways: firstly, by acquiring further land for rewilding, and secondly, by helping other landowners profit from nature-recovery land-management.
To fund this scaling, capital will be sought from three sources, in parallel.
The first is equity from impact investors beyond its 50 founding funders. Most of them are rewilding enthusiasts, but one is financial institution MFS Investment Management, which hopes other institutions will join.
The second is equity via a crowdfunding platform to be operated by Edinburgh-based firm ShareIn. The minimum investment will be the smallest currently possible, £50, and though outreach will be international, it will be targeted at Scots.
The third is debt, as banks have yet to lend to commercial rewilding companies.
The company is aiming for "ethical levels of profitability" and "useful returns" to its investor owners, via multiple revenue streams.
These could include natural-capital uplift income, natural-capital monitoring and data services to other landowners, residential courses for corporate and other groups seeking to experience and learn about the frontier of the new nature-recovery-based economy, regenerative agriculture, eco-tourism, building including affordable homes, and possibly green energy.
Several departments at Edinburgh University are already involved, along with more at Oxford University, which is collaborating on a 10-year programme managed by the new Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery.
Among the directors, Dr Carol Langston and Dr Hannah Rudman are faculty members at Scotland’s Rural College, Neil Sutherland is the founder of the Inverness-based firm MAKAR, head of operations Kirsty Mackay comes from a crofting family, while Archie Fraser is a former head of corporate finance at Solarcentury.
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