Jeremy Leggett, Highlands Rewilding’s Founder and CEO has recently been awarded the Blue Planet Prize for his lifetime contributions to combatting climate change. Below is the white paper version of his Blue Planet Commemorative Lecture, delivered yesterday in Tokyo. It is distillation of experience from his 40 years of science-based campaigning, in both the NGO and business worlds, and very much written for our times. We hope you will find it germane, interesting, and (net) encouraging.

As Highland Rewilding CEO Jeremy Leggett receives the Blue Planet Prize in Tokyo this week, this video, based on his speech, explores the strong connection between nature recovery, strengthening nature-based economies and reducing inequality, through the Nature Prosperity Pump.

By restoring forests, pumping carbon out of the atmosphere and locking it into timber-rich affordable homes, this approach can create sustainable jobs, help combat the climate and biodiversity crises, reduce inequality and, Leggett argues, strengthen democracy itself.

We are delighted to have been included in the Blue Earth list of the 100 top companies "transforming the way the world works.” This “BE 100” list was drawn up from thousands of candidates by a review panel consisting of Blue Earth partners including HSBC and Innovate UK, and a panel of venture capital companies.

Highlands Rewilding has lodged a formal objection to the proposed Glen Earrach pumped-storage hydro scheme at Loch Ness.

We have raised serious concerns about the impact of Loch Ness becoming artificially tidal. The Glen Earrach project, along with one existing scheme (Foyers Pumped storage hydropower scheme) and two others consented/proposed, will be moving huge volumes of water, causing regular fluctuations of over half a metre. This could cause potentially devastating biodiversity loss across the loch, and our objection highlights under-sampling in the developer’s surveys, evidence from eDNA of wider invertebrate communities, and potential impacts on blanket bog, ancient woodland and Loch nam Breac Dearga.

This blog also contains useful links to find out more information about the Glen Earrach Energy Project.

Following our last investment update, many of you got in touch to express your disappointment that we were unable to receive new investments during this round of under £50K. We have listened, and this week we are delighted to share that we are collaborating with Green Angel Ventures, to enable investments from as low as £5K. Their specialist angel network, the Green Angel Syndicate, are considering a collective investment in Highlands Rewilding, and will be undertaking their own independent due diligence.

This is a unique chance to be part of a powerful collective effort, helping us advance Highlands Rewilding’s mission while joining a community of investors who care as deeply as we do about the future of our land and our planet.

I am happy to report that we have been sailing well of late in the strong headwinds that have been facing us on the frontier of the embryonic nature-recovery market.

This week, Nature30 has been launched by the Scottish Government and NatureScot (replacing the previous, unwieldy term of Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs).

It's encouraging to see progress being made on this key target, and we’re proud to have been part of shaping this important process. We’ll continue to engage with Nature30 as it develops, and hope that it grows to reflect the range of conservation activities occurring across Scotland.

Peatlands cover just 3% of Earth but store 30% of the world's soil carbon – that’s twice as much as all forests combined. These ancient bogs might just be our best natural ally in fighting climate change.

At Bunloit estate, we are restoring 8,000-year-old peatland that's been degraded by decades of commercial forestry, releasing approximately 1,000 tonnes of CO2 each year.

This is how.

Highlands Rewilding recently completed a ground-breaking project that explored how “Community Joint Ventures” (CJVs) can link local people with the benefits of nature recovery. Focusing on the estates we manage and aiming to co-develop business plans for community-led ventures that support or benefit from rewilding, these ventures were intended not only to be beneficial in their own right, but also to provide useful examples for others to build on, encouraging the close involvement of local people in land management and its benefits more generally.

Today we are publishing our final project report to present what we’ve found, achieved and learned!

Our founder and CEO Jeremy Leggett has been awarded one of the world’s two top environmental prizes and its half million USD prize money. Past winners have included Jim Hansen, Gro Harlem Brundtland, and James Lovelock.

Jeremy has won the award for his work over the years on carbon, solar and most recently nature. He will be injecting all the prize money into Highlands Rewilding and our ongoing efforts to help scale nature recovery to the extent needed if global biodiversity collapse is to be reversed. He will be inviting high net-worth individuals, family offices and progressive organisations to join him.

We recently completed our fifth year on the frontier of the nature recovery market. It has proved to be a rockier frontier than we anticipated at the outset, for us and others seeking to make this vital market work. But we are holding the fort, and continue to have high hopes both that a thriving nature-recovery market will emerge in Scotland, and that Highlands Rewilding will be able to help lead it towards the exponential growth that will be needed if we are to hit necessarily ambitious government targets on biodiversity and carbon.

This year, Highlands Rewilding has taken an active role in the Celtic and Irish Sea hub, as one of the selected representatives of Scottish interests in the Irish Sea, tasked with investigating barriers to upscaling key priority marine habitats as part of the 30x30 commitment.

Our marine team, along with other representatives, visited three different sites spanning Scotland, Wales, and Ireland to experience large-scale native oyster restoration firsthand and identify challenges practitioners were encountering during the process.

These field trips have highlighted a series of critical challenges and actionable opportunities for native oyster restoration in the UK.

Highlands Rewilding is proud to have been part of the consortium delivering the Trustable AI in Mapping (TAiM) project funded by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency. The project has developed new standards to assess the reliability of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms used in environmental mapping.  

Four big wins for Scotland’s rural economy as Highlands Rewilding sells sufficient assets to repay National Wealth Fund loan.

Highlands Rewilding have uncovered an alarming decline in native oyster numbers within the Loch Sween Marine Protected Area (MPA). Marine biologist and oyster expert Dr David Smyth expected to find 100,000 or more native oysters in his shoreline surveys, instead he found fewer than 50. Unregulated gathering is the most likely cause for this dramatic decline.  

A company update from the Highlands Rewilding Board.

Highlands Rewilding's fourth annual natural capital report details a wide array of monitoring techniques deployed across three highly surveyed open air laboratories. The unique depth and breadth of this data collection and analysis make a significant contribution to understanding patterns of biodiversity and the embryonic natural capital market in Scotland.

Effective stakeholder engagement is a vital component in the forestry sector, ensuring that decisions and actions taken by forest managers align with the needs and concerns of local communities, interest groups, and other key parties. By involving these groups early in the planning and decision-making process, potential conflicts can be mitigated, and shared goals identified, leading to more successful and sustainable outcomes. 

A joint statement by Highlands Rewilding and Community Land Scotland.