Rewilding the Scottish Highlands: Creating Steps for Large-Scale Recovery

Rewilding is surging globally, restoring species and ecosystems at every scale. Today, our alliance of 250+ organisations is delighted to welcome Rewilding Affric Highlands, a landscape-scale initiative originally founded by Trees for Life, with support from Rewilding Europe. They are transforming 200,000 hectares of Scotland’s central Highlands—the UK’s largest rewilding landscape—into a resilient mosaic of native woodlands, peatlands, and wildlife corridors through community-led ecological restoration.

The Vision: Healing Through Natural Processes

For centuries, deforestation and intensive grazing by Deer and Sheep have fragmented the Highlands’ ancient Caledonian pinewoods and diminished its rich biodiversity.

Rewilding Affric Highlands aims to reverse this legacy through nature-led restoration—working closely with local partners to enable native Birch, Rowan and Alder to reclaim hillsides via natural regeneration—and allowing bare hillsides to evolve into connected forests, scrublands, and peatlands. These revived ecosystems nurture iconic species like Red Squirrels, Black Grouse, and Pine Martens while stabilising soils and enhancing carbon storage.

Science as the Bridge

At the heart of their success lies a groundbreaking collaboration: tracking GPS-collared red deer in partnership with Durham University and the Association of Deer Management Groups. This study illuminates deer movement patterns with remarkable precision, enabling landowners to balance deer management with the recovery of native woodlands. Follow and support their red deer collaring project.

Land as a Shared Legacy

Rewilding Affric Highlands is cultivating trust through voluntary partnerships with diverse landowners, from government forest agencies to sporting estates. They do so by forming MoUs—Memoranda of Understanding—with landowners, allowing ecologists to carry out assessments and offer tailored advice for enhancing biodiversity, respecting each estate’s unique context while fostering landscape-scale connectivity.

Watch our recent webinar that is an interactive session on engaging private landowners, bringing together insights on the psychology behind how private landowners become motivated for nature recovery on their land.

Communities as Keepers of the Wild

True restoration, the team understands, flows from reconnecting people to land and their identity. Therefore, Rewilding Affric Highlands creates hands-on opportunities that bring together the local community:

• Black Grouse Surveys: By training residents to monitor these endangered birds, they are leveraging the power of citizen science to strengthen community ties to land health while monitoring progress.
• Dundreggan Rewilding Centre: Opened in 2023 by Trees for Life, the founding organisation of Rewilding Affric Highlands, Dundreggan Rewilding Centre serves as a knowledge hub that blends rewilding education with Gaelic cultural heritage and hosts volunteer action at the heart of the landscape.
• Wild Tree Walks: By inviting residents on guided woodland walks to learn about the unique variety of tree, plant and lichen species present, the initiative is connecting more people with nature on their doorstep.
• Business Collaborations: Rewilding Affric Highlands actively supports existing, upcoming, and new enterprises that work in harmony with nature, such as those involved in wildlife tourism, sustainably sourced products, and the like.

The Rewilding Affric Highlands model demonstrates how rewilding can bridge divides—between benefitting landowners and meeting ecological goals, between tradition and innovation. By prioritising nature-based economies and community engagement, they’re creating rewilding steps for large-scale nature recovery in a region where land ownership and culture are deeply intertwined.

Learn more on Rewilding Affric Highlands’ website and follow influential work on their Instagram account.