The UK’s leading advocate of rewilding calls it ‘one of the most inspired projects in the whole world’. We are talking about the extraordinary efforts to transform AlUla, an area of ancient desert and oasis in north-west Saudi Arabia.
Last month, delegates at the International Exhibition and Forum on Afforestation Technologies, held in Riyadh, heard just how ambitious the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) plan is. By 2030, 65,000 hectares of degraded land will be ‘rehabilitated’. To put that in context, that is exactly the same area of Outstanding Natural Beauty managed by our own National Trust.
