Community Rewilding Guide
This page is part of the Community Rewilding Guide, a resource for local groups working to restore nature. Back to guide contents page.
Communities may be ‘communities of place’ – all the people who live in a geographical area. They can also be ‘communities of interest’ - people who share a common interest or identity, rather than living in the same place. This could include groups with shared cultural, social, or economic interests.
Communities who want to restore nature in an area are always in some way linked to ‘place’, although that will mean different things to different people. For some, the definition is tightly linked to the people who live in a particular place and call it home. For others, it may be more focused on a particular interest, such as angling or walking, or because their ancestors came from that place, which gives them a strong connection or affection for that place. The examples in this guide illustrate all of these. The River Ericht Catchment Restoration Initiative refers to ‘communities of place and interest’. Others talk about the value of living in a place, and having a strong sense of connection to the landscape and its history.
Defining your community helps to define membership criteria. If you’re making use of Scottish land reform laws, you’ll need to define your community carefully. For Community Right to Buy, communities must be defined geographically, but Asset Transfer is open to communities of interest.
Many community rewilding projects begin with informal groups, who work together with enthusiasm and vision. Carrifran Wildwood, which is now one of the longest established and highly regarded woodland restoration projects in Scotland, began with fortnightly meetings in a pub in Peebles. The setting didn’t distract the group, whose hard work led to the purchase of a 655-hectare valley and planting of three-quarters of a million trees according to a carefully formulated ecological plan.
But in order to own a site, apply for funding, and employ staff, you will need to become a formal organisation.
A range of models are available to communities, and it’s worth taking time to choose the one that works for your group. Many community organisations have had to spend time and money changing their constitution or even becoming a different kind of organisation, in order to be eligible for land reform laws, or to qualify as a charity.
In land reform law the organisation is referred to as the Community Body, which can be a Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG), a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO) or a Community Benefit Society (CBS). Guidance on choosing the right model for you is available here from The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) or through Information Notes published by the Community Woodlands Association.
For example, COAST began as an informal group, and became incorporated with charitable status to employ their first employee. They organised around a core aim of improving the waters around Arran for community environment and economy. Then they worked with the opportunities and mechanisms that arose at the time. There were political opportunities for the No Take Zone and the South Arran Marine Protected Area, with specific politicians willing to move the projects forward.
Moving towards employment is a significant step for a community organisation. COAST and Seawilding have each grown from a small group of volunteers to employing more than five full-time staff. Bright Green Nature has applied successfully for an Awards for All grant from the National Lottery to employ their community outreach person.
Community organisations must make decisions in a way that represents the members and meets the objectives of the organisation. This is all part of the advice provided by SCVO. Their pages on Running your organisation include links to good governance, to ensure that trustees understand their role, and to help recruit, induct and support good trustees. It’s important to understand how to run effective meetings, fulfil roles of chair, secretary and treasurer, and deal with any problems that arise. SCVO also offers templates and tools to help you implement good governance practices.
Many of the case studies in this guide highlight the need to have a good range of skills on the board, and typically this means including people with financial skills, technical and ecological skills. They also highlight the frequency with which these skills are already found in the community.
The award-winning charity, Seawilding, is the UK's first community-led native oyster and seagrass restoration project. Their aim is to restore lost biodiversity, sequester carbon, create green jobs and mentor other community-based groups to do the same (www.seawilding.org). They do this by restoring degraded inshore marine habitats, especially native oyster beds.
How we grew our group
At first, a community group called Cromach campaigned to stop dredging in Loch Craignish. One of our friends got really taken by oysters, and he started growing them, then decided to start a charity to deliver full-scale oyster restoration.
You go from being a group with very little admin, getting together every couple of months, all voluntary, sharing out tasks — to setting up a charity to take in funds and employ staff. We got five years’ funding from the National Heritage Lottery, giving us incredible longevity. The Coastal Communities Network were a really good source of support. All our trustees are from the community. In our peninsula you can find someone who knows about something. Now we have five full-time employees and one part-time.
Plus we’ve helped other communities start their own projects. Often we’re just a reassuring shoulder to cry on, or we suggest the first step: get a few people together, do a survey, see what you’ve got.
Other advice
Experimenting is a massive part of what we do – we knew very soon that we were here to fail so that other communities didn’t have to. There was no handbook on seagrass restoration, no one really knows how to do it. We’re going through all these processes, figuring out how to rewild the sea. We’re being as scientific as we can but if you wait for science to give you all the answers you’ve lost a decade. Everyone says it’s the UN Decade of Restoration so we decided to get on with it.
We tell the story effectively: good visuals, strong website design, videos, and engaging conversation with funders and individuals. This helped us build a reputation, attract private finance, and bring in people with scientific backgrounds. We wrote bids for scientific funding, becoming more robust in reporting and bid writing.
Government funding is only for one to two years, which doesn’t work for nature restoration. In three years, you only get to try one thing and scale it up. We’re now seeking more corporate funding. There are no metrics for carbon or biodiversity in the sea yet, but we’re working with companies that want to team up and build relationships. That’s quite an exciting space to be in.
What are community development trusts? Communities all over Scotland – large and small, rural and urban, mainland and islandbased – are setting up development trusts to help their neighbourhoods flourish through community-led activity, partnership working and enterprise. Read more here.
Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) is national membership organisation for the voluntary sector. Their mission is to support, promote and develop a confident, sustainable voluntary sector in Scotland. SCVO can help with setting up your organisation, running your organisation, governance
and employing staff. Find out more here.
Connect with us:
Get in touch: info@rewild.scot
We are grateful to SCOTLAND: The Big Picture for the images on this website.