A new Scottish rewilding business has secured £7.5m in funding from 50 new shareholders.
The initial founding funders include a Hollywood screenwriter and a world champion free-solo mountain climber.
Highlands Rewilding is now looking to broaden the shareholder base through crowdfunding, with as low a minimum investment as possible, in order to tackle the issue of land ownership inequality in Scotland.
Jeremy Legget, a former science director at Greenpeace, bought the 1,200 acre Bunloit Estate near Loch Ness in 2020 after selling his firm Solarcentury, which brought solar panels to consumers.
He set up Highlands Rewilding to build on his experience and let “nature recover and the community prosper through rewilding at scale”.
Highlands Rewilding has now purchased 852 acres of the Beldorney Estate and 830 acres of at Bunloit from Solarsanctuary - the trading name for Bunloit estate.
The land is now being operated by Highlands Rewilding, with the remainder of the Bunloit Estate being leased from Solarsanctuary. It also now employs staff under the rewilding project.
The aims of the project is to create new green jobs, engage with local communities, generate ethical profits and demonstrate a replicable, nature-based land management model.
Since the project started in 2020, it has been conferring with experts on ecology, forestry and carbon, as well as charities, government organisations and members of the Scottish Parliament. It has so far hired 17 full and part-time staff.
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