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The Scottish Government’s nature agency NatureScot today announced the public consultation for a new national park for Scotland.

Steve Micklewright, Convenor of the Scottish Rewilding Alliance and Chief Executive of Trees for Life, said:

“This welcome public consultation on Scotland’s new national park is a golden opportunity to place nature recovery and rewilding front and centre as priorities for our national parks – so these important places can lead the way in tackling the nature and climate crises, while creating all sorts of new nature-based economic opportunities.

“Now is not the time to be timid. Nature is declining around us, but we depend on nature for our food, health and wellbeing, and for everything we do. So our national parks need to be inspiring trailblazers that show how people and nature can flourish together.

“Through the consultation, we will be urging the Scottish Government to update the quarter-of-a-century-old legislation covering Scotland’s national parks, to ensure the parks are fit for purpose to tackle collapses in biodiversity and climate breakdown, while benefitting local communities and economies.

“The consultation is the public’s chance to ask the Government to prioritise nature, and to ensure the primary purpose of any new or existing national park is nature restoration for the benefit of the nation.”

Read NatureScot’s announcement on their website.

An alliance of nature charities in Scotland is ramping up its call on the Scottish Government and people to choose rewilding at a critical moment in the country’s political and environmental history with the launch of a new short film. 

Despite Scotland’s reputation as a place of natural beauty, from the dramatic peaks of Skye’s Trotternish Ridge to the vast sweep of Glencoe, the Scottish Rewilding Alliance says the science tells a very different story. Scotland is one of the most nature-depleted places in the world.

As part of its campaign to make Scotland the world’s first Rewilding Nation – a move backed by more than a dozen MSPs – the Alliance is hosting a free online event on Thursday 22 July to launch its new film ‘Choices’.

The film presents its Scottish audience with a number of ‘choices’ about their relationship with nature.

These include do we choose to expand our natural pine forests into huge areas of trees, shrubs and wildflowers – a place full of bird song and wild animal tracks? To have flower rich meadows in our towns and cities and create places where our children can develop, explore and play? To ensure oceans teeming with fish, whales and dolphins – full of food and supporting coastal communities who rely on nature for their living?

The Alliance says people can help achieve these aspirations by supporting rewilding, which is the large-scale restoration of nature.

The live launch event will hear from a panel of people who have already chosen to make nature recovery a priority for their respective businesses and communities.

They include Lynn Cassells from Lynbreck Croft in the Cairngorms, Sophie Ramsay from Bamff Ecotourism estate in Perthshire, Will Goudy from the Seawilding project at Loch Craignish in Argyll, and Kevin Cumming from the Langholm Initiative in Dumfries and Galloway.

Mark Ruskell MSP from the Scottish Greens will deliver the event’s keynote speech. On 15 June, Ruskell (Mid-Scotland and Fife) submitted a motion to the Scottish Parliament to make Scotland the world’s first Rewilding Nation. The motion was backed by polling in which 76% of Scots expressing an opinion supported rewilding, with just 7% opposed.

Steve Micklewright, Convenor of the Scottish Rewilding Alliance and Chief Executive of Trees for Life, said: “As Scotland readies itself for the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow later this year, the Scottish Government needs to demonstrate global leadership by prioritising rewilding.

“If the SNP makes a deal with the Scottish Greens to create a majority in Holyrood, we’re asking that it includes a promise to rewild at least 30% of Scotland’s land and sea by 2030. This can be achieved by restoring and expanding woodlands, moorlands, peatlands, rivers and marine habitats, and without loss of productive agricultural land.

“A community fund to make rewilding accessible from towns and cities, creating pollinator corridors and urban wildflower meadows could improve the population’s mental health and wellbeing, while reducing pollution and making urban areas more enjoyable places to live.”

Peter Cairns, Director of SCOTLAND: The Big Picture and host of Thursday’s live event, said: “As a nation we’re only just beginning to experience a baseline shift in our perception of Scotland’s environment. While open hillside is still deemed by many to be beautiful, there’s an increasing awareness that our celebrated landscapes are dramatically lacking in biodiversity, native woodland and wildlife.

“We’re far past the point of inaction – that’s no longer a choice we can afford to make. Despite many superb conservation initiatives, Scotland is lagging behind other countries, with its nature in steep decline.”

Declining or at risk species include red squirrels, wild cats, capercaillie and great yellow bumblebees. Recovery or return of species such as beavers, cranes, sea eagles and pine martens happen slowly, while elk and lynx are among the species already made extinct.

The Scottish Government has put 37% of Scotland’s seas into forms of designation, but damaging activities such as scallop dredging and bottom trawling are only banned from less than 5% of coastal waters. Government assessments reveal that the extent of seabed habitats continues to decline. Wild salmon populations are at historically low levels. Seabirds are feeding their chicks plastic waste.

The Alliance recommends using rewilding as a natural solution for increasing absorption of atmospheric carbon, building rewilding into post-Covid green recovery plans, and establishing a native species recovery policy and a nationwide network connecting nature recovery projects.

To sign-up for the online launch of ‘Choices’ on Thursday 22 July, 19:00-20:00, visit https://bit.ly/ChoicesLaunch.

Rewilding is going mainstream far quicker than we dreamt possible in 2019, when over 20 organisations across Scotland came together to form the Scottish Rewilding Alliance.

Steve Micklewright is the chief executive of Trees for Life, and the convenor of the Scottish Rewilding Alliance.

Rewilding is going mainstream far quicker than we dreamt possible in 2019, when over 20 organisations across Scotland came together to form the Scottish Rewilding Alliance.

The new two-party Scottish Government prefers to call it “nature restoration”, but the concept is the same, and even Boris Johnson wants to “build back beaver“.

The projects and organisations that make up the Alliance are very familiar with the social and economic benefits that well-designed rewilding projects bring for rural and coastal communities. But there is still some suspicion that the rewilding movement doesn’t understand the importance of people.

This is where the debate will be won or lost, and that’s why the Rewilding and The Rural Economy report our friends in Rewilding Britain just published, with input from us, is so important. It is the first detailed examination of the opportunities available to Scotland from what it calls nature-based economies.

The idea is that rewilding principles are used to create regenerative areas where nature can recover and communities can thrive. These areas, covering as much of 30% of our land and sea, would see a recovery in habitats, in species, and in abundance, but, crucially, they would also be home to growing and diverse communities and businesses.

Nature-based tourism is perhaps what people first think of, but there are many more businesses which currently thrive in increasingly wild places. There are already signs of rapidly growing interest in sustainable native forestry; recreational fishing; low-impact, high-value farming; and so on.

The report looks at 33 projects where rewilding techniques have been used, and on average, 10 years in, they employ 54% more people than their less wild predecessors. What’s more, the jobs created have been much more varied, allowing a wider range of people to stay in the area or move in for the longer term.

These plus points stack on top of the wider community benefits of rewilding. To pick just one high profile example, earlier this month Trees for Life won its court case against NatureScot, and all their historic licences to shoot beavers were ruled unlawful.

Evidence shows that well-located beaver populations do wonders for flood mitigation, and Rewilding Britain cite a study in Devon showing 30% lower peak water flow during storm events.

Less directly, wilder lands and seas also draw down carbon and store it, reducing Scotland’s climate impact. Whether or not you think that should have a price put on it, the fact remains that it’s exceptionally valuable.

The final – and perhaps most obvious – aim of rewilding is to restore biodiversity and bioabundance. There is a biodiversity crisis just as deep as the parallel climate crisis, and the old logic of “conservation” has failed.

We do not need lines drawn on a map around tiny, fragile remnants of the plants and animals Scotland used to support. Only large scale approaches – systems thinking – will allow us to begin the work needed to leave bountiful wild lands and seas for future generations.

If we are to see the economic benefits this report sets out, though, the changes required are not tinkering, and they will not be quick. Progress on this scale needs proper planning, but cannot be top-down, by ministerial decree. Nor can it be delivered just with local consent: plans of this sort need to be locally-led, and that takes time, and, ideally, government support.

Westminster and Holyrood have both begun to pledge funding, with UK ministers committing to a £640 million Nature for Climate Fund, and Scottish ministers promising to put £500 million into our natural economy, including by expanding the Nature Restoration Fund secured by the Scottish Greens before this year’s election.

These may be small sums compared to what both governments have spent on climate-busting projects over the years, but, if delivered well, the social and economic returns will make the case for a wider change in government funding priorities, both here and at Westminster.

In some respects, Scotland is ahead of the rest of the UK: the report recommends that England and Wales bring in a community right to buy, along the lines of Scotland’s land reform legislation.

But there is much more to do. The opportunity is there for real community restoration alongside restoration of our wild land and seas. Before the Highland Clearances, rural Scotland used to support far larger communities, and barren landscapes benefit no one. Ministers have signed up to the idea that “rural repopulation is a vital objective, alongside nature-based solutions”, and we will hold them to that.

Across much of Scotland, the kernels exist for nature and rural communities alike to recover. The Alliance will be pressing the new Scottish Government hard to deliver on radical nature restoration measures, and to do them in a way which puts community benefit and local leadership first.

This piece originally appeared online at https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/opinion/3569178/rewilding-scotland-people-heart-nature-restoration-opinion 

The Scottish Rewilding Alliance is calling on the Scottish Greens to make the trial reintroduction of lynx and the widespread relocation of beavers a core part of any agreement they reach with the Scottish National Party.

The Scottish Greens manifesto stated they ‘support the gradual reintroduction of species native to Scotland where appropriate and in cooperation with local communities, including a lynx reintroduction trial’.

“The Scottish Greens have committed to restoring nature through rewilding, including a trial lynx reintroduction. If they reach an agreement with the SNP that includes this commitment, many will see this as a sign they can achieve real change through cooperation,” said Steve Micklewright, Scottish Rewilding Alliance Convenor and Chief Executive of Trees for Life.

The native Labrador-sized Eurasian lynx was driven to extinction in Scotland some 500-1,000 years ago through hunting and habitat loss. It has now been reintroduced to many areas of Europe, including in areas used for farming, hunting, forestry and tourism.

Lynx areshy and solitary woodland hunters that avoid humans. Research suggests the Highlands has enough habitat to support around 400 lynx, which could help to restore nature’s balance by controlling numbers of roe deer, the cat’s preferred prey.

An opinion poll survey by respected market research organisation Survation for the Scottish Rewilding Alliance showed that 52% of Scots supported a pilot reintroduction of lynx, with just 19% disagreeing.

Steve Micklewright said: “A trial reintroduction of lynx will have very strong public support, and there would be no clearer signal that Scotland intends to become the world’s first Rewilding Nation.”

The Scottish Rewilding Alliance also wants to see a better approach to beaver relocations to suitable areas of Scotland where beavers are still missing, to help stop the needless killing of wild beavers when they cause problems for farmers on Tayside.

Beavers create wetlands that can reduce flooding, improve water quality, and benefit fish and other wildlife. But since the Government legally protected beavers in 2019, its nature agency NatureScot has issued dozens of killing licences – resulting in 20% of the Scottish population being killed in 2019 alone.

Steve Micklewright said: “Nearly all of these beavers could have been relocated to parts of Scotland where local landowners and communities want the benefits they bring, including reducing the risk of flooding. A deal between the Greens and SNP deal must tackle this needless waste of life.”

The Survation poll showed that 66% of Scots support beaver relocation ahead of their authorised killing. NatureScot has identified 100,000 hectares of potential beaver habitat in Scotland, but Ministers have decided to block beaver relocation to these areas.

“Public opinion is in favour of beaver relocation and we have huge areas where they could be moved to. The Greens must ensure that this can happen,” added Steve Micklewright.

The Scottish Rewilding Alliance, a coalition of over 20 environmental organisations, is calling on the Scottish Government to declare Scotland the world’s first Rewilding Nation, with the rewilding of 30% of Scotland’s land and sea within a decade.