Highlands Rewilding has acquired the funds needed to buy the 3,500-acre Tayvallich Estate in Argyll.
The estate joins the project’s two existing rewilding sites, Bunloit in Inverness and Beldorney in Aberdeenshire.
It was revealed in December, that founder and chief executive Dr Jeremy Leggett, a former Greenpeace director, had made an exclusive offer to buy the estate for £10.5m, with an agreement that funds needed to be raised before the end of February.
The project team has also extended its crowdfund and fundraising campaign for a further two months until the end of April, in order to "fully test investor sentiment" on the back of its strengthened business case of adding another estate to its portfolio.
Highlands Rewilding is seeking capital in three ways. The first is equity from 'citizen rewilders' via crowdfunding. The second is equity from financial institutions. The third is the rest, including equity from investors of the kind which invested £7.6m in the company’s first-phase, including 50 founding funders: affluent rewilding enthusiasts, family offices, foundations, trusts and forward-looking companies.
Leggett said: “The team is looking forward to the many aspects of work we will be able to do on Tayvallich.
“The rich tapestry of habitats onshore and offshore will provide fertile ground for our data acquisition and processing, and natural-capital verification science.”
Already, the project’s crowdfund has attracted more than 500 investors, 40% of whom live in Scotland, who have boosted funds raised by over £800,000.
Leggett continued: “While we have tried and failed to attract the first major investments from investment funds, pension funds, and insurance companies, we know the appetite is there with many telling us that the project has made amazing progress, that they know there will be growth in the nature recovery market, and to revisit our conversions in six to 12 months’ time.
“Fund managers have told us that our mass ownership works well for them, because of the element of social licence it brings - stated another way, the more that citizen rewilders invest at the £50 to £100 level, the more the financial institutions are likely to invest at the £50m to £100m level.”
Highlands Rewilding intends to close the purchase of Tayvallich Estate by the end of March, with details of the investment made public in due course.
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