Rewilding Scotland: Local people must not be excluded by wealthy landowners who want to offset their carbon emissions – Magnus Davidson

We are seeing a greater importance being placed on land in Scotland as society shifts towards a net-zero emissions economy and aims to stop losses to nature.

By Magnus Davidson

Saturday, 1st October 2022, 4:55 am

Around 18 months ago, the term ‘green lairds’ was introduced to the news cycle as the trend of rich individuals and organisations interested in land acquisition for nature restoration started to become increasingly apparent. A trend which has been common among these new lairds is the move towards rewilding.

Rewilding is a progressive approach to conservation with the aim of rebuilding degraded ecosystems, using natural processes, to a near-complete ‘trophic system’. In layman’s terms, that means restoration of the environment from the lowest level of the food web through to the top, at times including the reintroduction of predators, some of which we’ve not seen for hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years.

Two of the desired outcomes of rewilding are increased biodiversity and greater carbon capture and storage, both vital to Scotland in this time of the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis.

Rewilding Scotland: Local people must not be excluded by wealthy landowners who want to offset their carbon emissions – Magnus Davidson | The Scotsman