Bunloit Estate
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“We aim to be a world-leading open laboratory for natural-capital verification science – across a wide range of Scotland’s upland-to-sea habitats – we aim to help make the new natural-capital economy more investable, and more quickly so.”
Highlands Rewilding
Highlands Rewilding is a company with a mission to generate nature recovery and community prosperity through rewilding taken to scale. It aims to become a world leader in accelerating nature-based solutions that can help fight the existential and related crises of climate meltdown, biodiversity collapse, and social inequality, whilst helping to rebuild local economies.
The company will use its three estates as ‘Open air Natural Capital laboratories’. To ensure an evidence-based approach, the company makes extensive use of satellites, drone-based sensors, ground-based sensors, eDNA analysis, and observational work by ecologists to generate natural capital data. This data then informs the design of interventions on the land, for instance the felling of monoculture conifer plantations to be replaced with native woodland or restored peatland. It is hoped that these projects will act as an exemplar to encourage other landowners to pivot their land management to net-zero and nature positive practises.
Bunloit, an estate on the shores of Loch Ness, was the first estate purchased by Highlands Rewilding in 2020 and thus is the primary scientific test-bed for the company. Formerly, it was a family estate and the land was dominated by grazing activity. Highland Rewilding’s objectives for the estate are to:
- Restore its natural peatlands, including through the clearing of coniferous plantations (forest to bog restoration)
- Continuing to graze a small herd of highland cattle across the grassland to maintain and boost biodiversity.
- Managing and gradually thinning the forests over time and replacing with broadleaf woodlands, allowing natural regeneration to occur and spread out of the edges.
- Investigating invertebrate reintroduction, starting with wood ants. Increasing deer control is a key plank in this strategy.
- Expand the agro-forestry garden, planting additional fruit and nut trees and fruit bushes.
- Continue programme of community engagement and school classes and encourage community access to the estate. This emphasis on community is essential for both genuine social progress but also to provide a social ‘licence-to-operate’ with the local community.
Whilst the projects are engaging with carbon markets to ensure their effectiveness, they are not pre-selling carbon or any other credits (known as PIUs – Pending Issuance Units). Instead, they aim to sell any credits after measuring change over a number of years (referred to as ‘ex-post’). Biodiversity credits are expected to generate a greater return in the future assuming, as expected, that a strong biodiversity credits framework will emerge in Scotland.
Read more about the company here.
Revenue Model
Ecotourism – offering high end accommodation and retreats (for leisure or businesses).
Highlands Rewilding will sell high integrity Natural Capital credits, such as carbon and biodiversity credits (21% of expected revenue).
Consultancy offering data-driven land management advisory services to other neighbouring landowners with an offer to share in monetisation of natural capital (55% of expected revenue).
Public/Grant Funding
A £194,700 FIRNS (Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland) grant received to fund an `8 month ‘Joint Ventures for Scalable Community Benefits from Rewilding’ project across its three estates. The outcome of the project will be a series of investment-ready business plans for community joint ventures which capitalise on environmental improvements from rewilding, and the valuable ecosystem services they generate. They will be a mechanism for involving more people in nature restoration, boosting the economy, skills development, job creation and cohesion in local communities.
Legal Arrangements
Highlands Rewilding investors sign ‘Subscription Agreements’ which bind them to not selling their shares on to people who do not agree with their purpose and mission.
Parties Involved
To carry out research strategies, Highlands Rewilding has partnered up with a group of both local and UK-wide conservation organisations, ecologists and scientific specialists to develop surveying methods that will inform intervention plans and recommendations for rewilding. These include the University of Oxford, the University of Edinburgh, SRUC, University of the Highlands and Islands, University of Aberdeen, Agricarbon, Nature Metrics, Peatland Action and Plantlife.
Highlands Rewilding believe local communities must be closely involved in nature recovery and are developing a progressive model for community empowerment in land management decision-making, and works with a local deer stalker to manage deer numbers and a local farmer to graze cattle on the estate. The estate also welcomes Bunloit’s local high school for outdoor education and environmental science classes on the estate.
Environmental Impact
Only 79 hectares of the estate are currently classified as being in ‘good’ condition, according to Defra’s English biodiversity metric. From this baseline, the estate hopes to achieve significant biodiversity uplift through the creation and regeneration of native woodland, restoration of peatland and other habitats, including species rich grassland. Rare species the estate is hoping to attract include the Pinewood mason bee and the White-faced darter dragonfly.
Peatland restoration and afforestation will also sequester large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.
Restoration of wetland and riverine habitats especially provide water quality improvements, improved water retention for natural flood management and reduction in wildfire risks.
Social Impact and Engagement
Central to Highlands Rewilding’s mission is community prosperity and tackling inequality. It will tackle this through: Partnership and co-operation with local community groups offering new opportunities for local people to connect with and work on the land, including the creation of many new meaningful jobs, training opportunities and internships on the rewilded estates; co-ownership of the company and land with local people through a community share offer (minimum investment of only £50); creation of local microenterprises, such as in kelp farming, regenerative farming or homebuilding; opportunities to create truly affordable homes by offering self-build or collaborative JV (Joint Venture) opportunities to local people on sites within the estates; and engagement with local schoolchildren teaching about environmental issues, bushcraft, outdoor conservation work and species identification.
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