Third Annual Natural Capital Report - Building Natural Capital

As we advance our model for nature recovery, community prosperity and ethical profitability, both Highlands Rewilding and the natural capital landscape around us are developing quickly. With the backdrop of world business, NGO and civil society leaders, including our CEO Jeremy, meeting to accelerate climate action at COP 28,  we provide insight into natural capital developments and our pioneering model in our latest annual report: Building Natural Capital.

Summary

Much is planned for the year ahead across our three ‘open air natural capital laboratories’ for verifiable natural capital science, and as we continue our programme of in-house data gathering and research into biodiversity, greenhouse-gas and socio-economic changes, we make our outputs freely available to others where we can.

This natural capital research has informed our land management decisions from peatland restoration (p31-2, 66-9), rainforest regeneration (p106, 119-20), pond creation (p72-3) and targeted deer control (p22-3), to mycorrhizal fungi inoculation (p33-36), regenerative agriculture approaches (throughout) and the reintroduction of ecosystem engineers beginning, we hope, with the ‘small but mighty’ wood ant (p41-43).

Our main environmental objectives are to generate and measure biodiversity uplift, including in terms of rare species, valuable habitats, ecosystem structure, function and resilience. We seek to re-establish natural processes where possible to facilitate these changes, while also involving local communities in our land management and its benefits.

We hope the progress and plans reported will be of wide interest, and will contribute to Scotland’s efforts to set new standards in the use of nature-based solutions for climate, biodiversity and social challenges.