Rewilding is a progressive approach to nature conservation that revitalizes forest, peatlands and pastures, providing space for wildlife and flora to flourish and communities to thrive. It creates a landscape that boosts biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and job creation for guardians of the expanding wildland, all at the same time.

Our definition has people and communities at the heart of rewilding, and this is where it differs from some other definitions. But many of the 20 organisations that are members of the Scottish Rewilding Alliance think as we do (Highlands Rewilding will be a member of this alliance).

We recognise that communities owning and operating the land is a preferable model, and some Scottish communities have made that approach work in an impressive way. Our idea provides another option, rooted in the experience of our Founder and CEO, Jeremy Leggett, as a social entrepreneur of speedy growth, and the urgent need for speed in fixing climate meltdown and biodiversity collapse. In the solar company Jeremy founded, Solarcentury, he saw the solar-solutions revolution unfold from the front lines, and rode the wave of exponential growth that founding-funder investment created. Solar is now the least expensive energy option on the planet. In Jeremy’s own words, “I view the solar-solutions revolution as a kind of survival reflex in society. I aspire to try and help replicate that phenomenon, before I die, in the nature-based solutions revolution that is imperative if humankind is to fashion a survivable future. I know, in principle, how to bring investment quickly to such a mission, and how to execute plans rapidly. I don’t know how to bring such capital to local-community rewilding projects (though I’m sure others do).”

There is also the question of risk. What we are doing entails quite high risk. We are using debt and face many inevitable uncertainties in the business model, as governments struggle with new policies. Members of communities local to our projects have told us that, in their view, it would be very difficult to persuade local community organisations to take on such risk, as things stand. If our rewilding company succeeds in its efforts to make nature-based solutions more investible this will help de-risk the ground for others, including local communities acting on their own.

We are not guaranteed to succeed, and we are not saying that we have the only model for helping nature recovery in the Highlands, much less the best one. Again, in Jeremy’s own words, “It simply seems the best way for an individual with my history to contribute, if he or she has a passion for trying, provided there is social license so to do.”

The challenges and issues others have raised around ‘absentee green lairds’ are highlighting an important conversation to be had. Rich folk buying up as much land as possible for natural capital/ rewilding purposes, without community support and removing people from existing jobs is a valid concern – and one that should indeed be challenged. We are hoping that Highlands Rewilding, as a mass-ownership organization can be one of the potential solutions to this.

We have a broad shareholder base of 50 socially-motivated founding funders who contributed £7,629,000 of equity in our start-up round. These first investors include 14 current and former business leaders of non-financial companies investing as individuals, 11 entrepreneurs, 7 family offices, 5 fund managers investing as individuals, a Hollywood screen writer and a world champion free-solo mountain climber. They committed sums ranging from £20,000 to £1,500,000. Among the 50 is one financial institution MFS Investment Management.

We have undertaken a second round of fundraising, which aims to attract three categories of investors in parallel: more equity akin to our founding funders; citizen rewilding equity investors through a crowdfund; and a bank to leverage our equity. This crowdfund is intended to expand our mass-ownership, and allow as many people as possible, and in particular those living local to our projects, to invest in nature restoration, has seen over 600 ‘citizen rewilders’ invest an incredible £1 million. More than 40% of these investors are resident in Scotland. Investments from larger investors outwith the crowdfund, and a bridging loan from the UK Infrastructure Bank has enabled us to buy a third estate, Tayvallich, in Argyllshire, and expand our rewilding and decarbonisation work to 3 sites.

For a detailed investment history see our Investing page.

Our model tries to bring profit-for-purpose to bear in the race to stop climate meltdown and reverse biodiversity collapse. It is just one model, and not necessarily the best one. Charities and co-ops are wonderful models. Our model is different in that whilst aiming to create ethical levels of profit for all co-owners it seeks - crucially - to attract private investors, whether individual or institutions, to deploy their capital at scale: to their benefit, and the benefit of communities and the planet. We do not believe that philanthropy and charities, imperative as they are, can come close to delivering the £20 billion of investment that Scotland needs over the next ten years in order to hit its rightly ambitious biodiversity and climate targets.

We base our model on multiple revenue streams, and have asked our investors to back a three-step logic chain, while acknowledging the inevitable and inescapable uncertainties inherent in our modelling:

1. That the emergence of a fast-growing global nature-recovery industry of some sort is inevitable in the near future, given the relevant megatrends.
2. That Scotland is a nation well positioned to capitalise, in terms of its terrain, habitats, home-grown talent, and political will to seize the moment.
3. Crucially, that Highlands Rewilding has assembled a unique in-house team perfectly positioned, by dint of collective experience and data firepower, to lead the way through this system change in the corporate world, and to adapt strategy optimally as events unfold.

We focus on several key Revenue Streams:

Natural Capital Credits - Biodiversity uplift credits provide our strongest natural-capital credit (NCC) revenue stream in this plan. Carbon credits play an important support role. We do not assume nutrient (N and P) credits, or any other kind of novel NCC credit that may transpire. We root our assumptions in current discussions of policy, and reality check them as best we can in the imperfect and temporary circumstances. A central premise of the plan is that we delay taking NCCs to market for 5 years, whether ours or those of our platform clients.

Platform Service - We use our data-acquisition-and-processing strengths in a win-win proposition to landowners in need of affordable expert help in pivoting to the approaching nature-recovery reward system.
This data-based platform-service revenue stream is our single biggest. But it assumes we reach only a small fraction of the total accessible market. Data is where our strongest upside potential lies.

Nature Recovery Retreats - Nature recovery retreats provide an attractive revenue stream that will make use of our stunning facilities across our three sites. They will also build a vital network of corporations and other organisations learning whilst seeking opportunities to pivot strategically on the frontier of the emerging nature-recovery industry. In this way, like the platform, they help accelerate horizontal scaling of nature recovery.

Ecotourism - Ecotourism will be centred on Beldorney initially, featuring glamping of the kind that has been so successful at the Knepp Wildand estate in Sussex. As with the rewilding retreats, we will seek to build a growing network of supporters and friends of the Highlands Rewilding project: people who follow the project closely, return to it periodically, and act as unpaid marketing staff constantly.

Eco-building - We are considering building a limited amount of eco-housing on Beldorney and Bunloit. On both estates, we have ten ruined crofts, and several sites suitable in-principle for smart clachans – off-grid zero-carbon hamlets. As with eco-tourism, we plan to proceed first at Beldorney, cautiously.

Renewable Energy - We will move as quickly as we can to decarbonise the energy we use in the land, buildings, and vehicles that we manage. Solar photovoltaics, heat pumps, batteries and electric vehicle infrastructure will be at the heart of this.
Large savings are on our radar, even if current prices of electricity, heating and fuel decline. In this we target not just cash, but strong contributions to the zero-carbon status that we intend for our estates. Ultimately, if we innovate, this will mean more revenues.

Forestry - Forestry contributes in two ways. Initially, we are benefitting from a good revenue flow from monoculture conifer plantations that we are felling. This we are doing so as to improve biodiversity and carbon uptake over the ten years of our plan, following strong expert advice. Later, where we find suitable land, we will conduct commercial forestry using mixes of native species and some conifers, under continuous cover.

Land Sales - We will sell land in two circumstances. The first as small plots around any eco-building we might do, or self-building our employees might seek to do. The second as larger plots if we run into trouble with our cash flow. We would sell the former at a small discount, the latter at the market values of the day to inject cash if required, and only sell to buyers aligned with Highlands Rewilding values.

Research Grants - We have a high-calibre science team of our own and will be working with some of the world’s leading natural-capital researchers in universities and other institutions. We would be failing in our task of creating an international centre-of excellence for nature recovery if we didn’t attract grants to our work.

Based on interactions with senior politicians and officials in the Scottish government to date, we are hopeful that Highlands Rewilding will attract government support, including financial support. We are told that our plan ticks multiple boxes of government policy in environmental protection and economic development, and land-reform transition justice as well. We really think we can do Scotland proud, and hope they will agree.

Essential. The existential threats of our times cannot be overcome without the full engagement of communities, and Highlands communities are particularly threatened by a trio of stresses: climate change, biodiversity loss, and rising inequalities in land ownership. Accordingly, we hope to attract a high proportion of investors from Highlands communities, who - short of full community ownership of land - see the Highlands Rewilding Ltd model as a next-best-thing. We further hope that the exemplar we create – bringing people-powered equity and low-interest debt to the business of nature recovery and community prosperity through rewilding – will encourage more Highlands communities to “go it alone”, as some already have. If so, we look forward to them benefiting from our research on Bunloit, Beldorney and Tayvallich including the de-risking of their plans by helping shape investible models for them to copy if they wish.

That theoretical point is the point at which Highlands Rewilding calls it a day, says job done, manages the land it holds but seeks no more, and does what it can to support further community rewilding projects, including hooking up with them in the regional rewilding corridors that would be in existence by then.

Each investor has ordinary shares and, on any decision put to the shareholders, each share carries one vote. Every share is of the same type. If we are successful every share will make a 5% return at least, annualised over the 10 years of our current plan, plus whatever dividends we might be able to pay.

That said, decision making in a company limited by shares mainly lies with the Board of Directors with only certain issues being decided by the majority of the shareholders. The Directors have a duty to protect the interests of all shareholders, especially minority shareholders as well as broader stakeholders in the company’s activities.

Highlands Rewilding is not structured in such a way as to give all decision making power to the membership / investors. We feel that structures which work in this way, like certain co-operatives, whilst excellent for many projects, are not suited to the type of business plan which we are working to. We recognise that this will not be everyone’s cup-of-tea, and that this corporate element of our model will put some people off from investing in us.

Our blog, Governance and Land Colonialism, goes into more depth

As trustees retire in due course, the Board of Trustees will make further appointments on the same principle of a majority of mission-congruent Highland Scots. This is how we envisage what we call a “longevity principle” working, off into the future, guarding the natural-capital stocks, the community-centricity of the operating model, and its aim to help repopulate the Highlands of Scotland via a rural green new deal.

We strive to take into account the views of the local communities. Please get in touch via our crowdfund@highlandsrewilding.co.uk email address if you have any concerns and we will do our best to address them.

An example of how we have addressed concerns historically is the one that came from some residents living along the single-track road leading to Bunloit. They were worried that our activities would increase car numbers on the road. We explained that we would not be increasing the numbers significantly, in part because we need to control numbers of visitors because of the fragility of our ecosystems. Nonetheless we contributed £15,000 to a Highland Council plan to put more passing places in along the road, and constructed two of our own. We also commissioned a traffic consultancy to conduct a survey of vehicle movements on the road. (The consultancy concluded, based in the data collected - including in the tourist season - that any small addition we might make to vehicle movements would be insignificant in terms of impact).

Help, we believe. Our hope, for all the many people worried and angry about rising land-price inequality in Scotland, is that - at least in the case of the Highlands Rewilding land ownership - shareholders who might profit will be rewilding enthusiasts favouring a community-centric nature-recovery model, motivated by much more than money. We further hope that many of them will be Scots. We will emphasise Highland communities in our outreach. We further hope that international shareholders will be attracted to our rewilding projects because of the domestic social imperatives we have described.

Our model is also highly copyable, especially if we can de-risk it more, as we intend. As more and more follow in these footsteps, there is less and less need for a Highlands Rewilding model. We can quietly retire from the field, at least in terms of vertical scaling of our operation via further land acquisition. We might even quietly congratulate ourselves on having helped with what might be thought of as horizontal scaling: land ownership by others encouraged to follow our model, or aspects of it, in their own right, whether local communities new to land-ownership at scale, or land owners already managing large tracts of land.

Highlands Rewilding Ltd owns a good few tracts of land across the Highlands (perhaps 20?). In the woodlands (old and new), peatlands and pastures on this land, millions of tonnes of carbon are being sequestered and a riot of biodiversity is to be found. In places, the wildlands are linking up in corridors as other rewilder landowners, members of the rapidly expanding Scottish Rewilding Alliance, join forces with Highlands Rewilding Ltd. A rural green new deal is in full swing on the Highlands Rewilding lands: plentiful jobs, zero-carbon eco-enterprise hubs and hamlets where employees work and increasingly live. The COP26 legacy “Forest for Hope” planted and regenerated on Beldorney is growing fast, a clear exemplar of what can be done, expanding up and down the Deveron Valley on neighbours’ lands, well known internationally and much visited.

Apart from the joy and pride that fills the hearts of the early investors in Highlands Rewilding Ltd, they have profited handsomely. The conservative assumptions of the first business model they backed proved to be pessimistic. This is largely because innovation on Highlands Rewilding land has led to the creation of profitable enterprises in HRL hubs. Regenerative agriculture has led to high-value specialist food and drink production. Local timber is being used to assemble high-value furniture. Increasingly being milled onsite, the timber is being used in a new generation of affordable eco-homes, increasingly benefiting from offsite modular construction. Energy micro-businesses are using solar-powered battery banks to charge EVs, and raised “agrivoltaic” solar arrays are doubling up revenue streams from energy and agriculture below the solar panels. Eco-tourists are paying premium prices to come and see the wildlands and their enterprising communities in action. After their guided expert tours and therapeutic stays they are going home inspired… in many cases to replicate what they have seen.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Scotland, communities with no prior rewilding experience are adopting Highlands Rewilding-type models. This trend is being accelerated by increasingly supportive Scottish Government policies, and increasingly easy-to-access low-interest debt from banks, both private and public. Rewilding in Scotland has long since ceased to be dominated by the absentee ultra-rich. Increasingly it is the norm on land owned by citizen rewilders from local and regional communities, and their international friends and co-investors. The scaling of our model in Scotland is paralleled by even bigger funds, operating throughout the UK and internationally, which are channelling increasingly large sums of capital into the rewilding mission.

Hope is being spawned in many hearts. Highlands Rewilding has become one of many emblems of hope that humankind might finally be finding its way to a survival trajectory.