Welcome to this guide

This guide is for anyone in Scotland interested in rewilding alongside others in your community. You might be thinking of forming a community group to work with others to rewild local areas. You might be part of a community group and interested in how rewilding could be relevant to your existing or future activities. 

From those working to restore and connect urban nature sites or return oysters to their local loch, to those taking on the restoration of thousands of hectares of degraded moorland, people across Scotland are creating a more nature-rich future. 

What starts in a smaller local area can grow, both through increasing awareness of what’s possible, and through connecting sites with corridors. By being a voice for wilder nature, communities can help enable rewilding in their area. And by working alongside other groups or organisations, like the Scotland-wide Northwoods Rewilding Network or initiatives like the Black Hills Regeneration Project, communities can be part of large-scale ecological restoration. At sea, large scale rewilding provides opportunities for communities to directly restore ecosystems at scale. 

Every community is unique. Rewilding, too, will look different for different groups of people and in different places. This guide is based on the experiences of real communities who have shared their stories and their top tips for others. This guide explores how these groups can contribute to large-scale nature restoration through their own work.