UKC

Scottish conservationists hope to convert a Highland sporting estate into a rewilding showcase after a mystery benefactor gave them more than £17.5m to buy it.

The Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT), best known for its small nature reserves, has bought Inverbroom estate near Ullapool in north-west Scotland, complete with an 11-bedroom lodge ....

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/03/mystery-donors-175m-gift-co...

Here's a map which helps see the scope of the purchase. Includes a nice bothy.

https://www.landfor.co.uk/content/large/inverbroom_estate/inverbroom_estate...

This kind of news is such a welcome relief to nearly all the other type of news at the moment.

On the face if it this is great news. Certainly way better for future prospects for nature than the crappy old sporting estate it'd continue to be under most potential owners. But not everyone is convinced. We asked land reformer Andy Wightman for his take:

"That is fine in the short term but only a radical reform of land governance is going to achieve the restoration of nature across Scotland..."

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/news/2025/03/nature_charity_buys_huge_highlan...

I can think of a couple of golf resorts that could do with rewilding ...

This response from Andy Wightman (who I usually have a lot of time for) has annoyed me a bit - it's not a case of either/or.

Public policy/govt is always two steps behind, so it's important to build a critical mass of private investment that can show, demonstrably, that this approach to natural restoration works. This will provide a blueprint (and hard scientific data) to back up any public policy that moves towards this. 

Me too. 

We're a long way from being perfect (or even adequate), but this purchase is a step in the right direction. This should act as a demonstration of what rewilding can look like, and show estate owners how they can develop their own estates. Wightman's somewhat mealy-mouthed response does not provide any similar encouragement. Estate owners are not going to change their working practices by being shouted at. 

I've known Andy since the early 1980s when we were both students, he was saying much the same then. In an ideal world he'd be correct, unfortunately these conservation group land purchases are needed. I'm also unclear why he mentions the RSPB's purchase of Upper Glen Avon in the 1980s as a key date, they aquired land at neighbouring Abernethy  earlier while the NTS have long owned places like Ben Lawers (1950s?) & much of Glencoe  (1930s ?).

He's a zealot.  Like lots of zealots he has good ideas and intentions, and gets them into general circulation.  However, zealots are entirely divorced from reality and a zealot>reality interface is needed, as has happened here.

Great news! But also in defense of Andy here (as another admirer of his work over the years, who doesn't agree with everything he says), he is right that this isn't a method which transfers. There simply aren't that many mystery megadonors, and the fact that landscape-scale nature restoration relies on them is a bad thing in itself I think. 

In Wales we are trying as hard as we can to raise the capital to rewild perhaps 1000 acres via the Tir Natur project. £72k was raised via justgiving with a huge number of small donations. But millions more will be needed so a lot of time is spent looking for similar megadonors. The other options is seeking to squeeze the land for carbon credits or natural capital/BNG which ultimately doesn't restore nature, it just offsets someone else's destruction of it.

There do need to be better systemic compulsions for nature restoration to take place at scale outside of the assuaging of rich consciences or the laundering of corporate reputations, I think.

Yep they should be boycotted and rewilded.

On the subject of shooting estates and Golf courses...

I can think of one Ayrshire golf course owner who needs re-shooting (rather than re-wilding) 🤣

Andy Wightman's argument that spending the £17M on land reform campaigning would have worked better seems a huge gamble to me. I agree that ideally rewilding would simply be a compulsory obligation for land owners, with no public or charity money needing to go towards it. But we don't live in an ideal world. Land owners are our ruling class. Deference to them and their interests is deeply ingrained. 

This land purchase by Scottish Wildlife Trust is ensuring that at least that small corner of our country is restored to how it all ought to be. I celebrate that.

Good news indeed. Suspect that the Bothy will now have its days numbered, before being put to a new use. As has happened at another SWT reserve.  Small inconsequential change for hillgoers, but hopefully a massive ecological change coming.

…and this guy Andy is taking a very odd position IMO.

The best way to take action, is to take action. This is real, tangible change on the ground. You can see why an individual looking to create a legacy might want that rather than funding a lobbying operation of uncertain success.

Great to see someone doing something positive for the world with their wealth!

I'm curious as to how they are going to suppress deer numbers enough to support ecological improvement without erecting a huge amount of fencing? Do deer stay in the same areas all the time like hefted sheep?

They just keep shooting them!  It works, although it does sometimes cause friction with neighbouring estates. 

https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/rewilding-projects/mar-lodge

Presumably the grades for the deer stalking on neighbouring estates goes up as their deer numbers reduce so they have to advertise to better deer stalkers....

And note NTS Mar Lodge show it’s possible to carry out a prolonged heavy cull without restrictions to public access….

They could have done it more quickly if they didn’t retrieve the carcasses from the Hill, but Mar Lodges manager got their fingers burnt in a previous job where they faced a vociferous campaign against leaving the dead deer on the hill.

The deer at Mar Lodge are now dominantly on the less accessible parts of the Estate, and it’s more time consuming and difficult to keep up the cull, particularly when retrieving.

This now means Mar are talking about possibly putting hill tracks in to facilitate. 

I would imagine that SWT may also face these dilemmas.

The neighbouring traditional estates will sling mud at SWT as Estate value is partly determined by the number of Stags shot each year (hence estates feed the deer over winter and happily maintain an artificially high herd number, sodding the environmental consequences), and less overall deer population means less Stags, and consequently lower land value from a sporting perspective.

I have no idea how feasible it would be, but I wonder if it would be possible to butcher the deer and sell the meat.  If you're going to eat meat it's hard to think of anything you could buy that would be more ethical or sustainable than culled wild venison.

That’s why the carcasses are removed from the hill, to be sold to game dealers and onwards for human consumption.

From an environmental perspective, there must be a point at which for a cull that needs to be done, the hassle of dragging each carcass off the hill gets in the way of achieving the herd reduction and concomitant landscape restoration.

Oh they definitely do that... used to buy venison by the quarter carcass from a very high profile conservationist estate owner. Butchered at the village butcher, straight in the freezer. Fraction of the price/miles of anything shop bought.

from memory of work on Creag Meagaidh, the hinds are hefted, at least to some extent, but not the stags.

That seems to be what the Cairngorms Campaign say although I don't know if it is a good source or not.  

https://www.cairngormscampaign.org.uk/news/Mar-Lodge-Deer-Management

"Neighbouring estates may complain that deer from their ground move onto Mar Lodge Estate as a result of culling policy on Mar Lodge Estate. However, while mobile within a relatively small herd home range, research at the then Institute of Terrestrial Ecology and elsewhere demonstrated that deer do not readily move in large numbers outwith that home territory to which they are hefted, except under pressures, especially population pressures, within that territory, even onto better grazing or shelter. Similar concerns by estate owners about their deer moving to nearby land where numbers are being reduced have been well tested and rejected, e.g. at Inshriach and Invereshie by NCC/SNH, at Creag Meagaidh by SNH, and at Abernethy by the RSPB. "

It has worked wonders in Glen Feshie.

Hmmm...mysterious benefactor? Why is this still OK? Who is it, if there's no nefarious intent then just tell us who it is.

Guilty till proven innocent. Sad to go through life assuming the worst.....

It is likely that the donor specified anonymity as a condition of the donation, and it is quite possible that the SWT do not know who the donor is.

Such anonymity is not unusual in such cases. I recall that the community buyout of Eigg was aided with an anonymous donation. 

youtube.com/watch?v=JqrJ4wGid4Y&

What "nefarious intent" are imagining? SWT are hardly rogues.

I've been led to believe it's Nicola Sturgeon.
Quite how she's got that sort of money is anybodys guess...

Nefarious rewilding? Sounds like a Douglas Adams character.

I'm guessing the 'Dislikes' are for the missing apostrophe 🙄

Mine was because it sounds extremely unlikely. Or were you just joking?

Assume the latter.

Sweet!

Now they just need around £50 million for planting 10 million trees and erecting 50km of deer fence

That bit is easy, no need to fence just employ professional stalkers and get the deer numbers right down, and then let out some deer shooting to the locals ‘for the pot’ to maintain the low numbers.

The trees will come naturally to the lower slopes quite quickly, and volunteers will be happy to do planting (if required), but also to help control the invasives. The deer numbers down, trees up bit shouldn’t cost a fortune.

The bigger issue and hard labour will be to restore the degraded peat. On traditional estates like this some areas have 30% or more exposed peat.  That needs alot of hands on work, often manually, and possibly on quiet remote areas.

I don't see why charitable donations need be public. I'd imagine anyone going public with such a donation would then be inundated with requests to make other donations etc.

They perhaps just want the world to have the outcome of their donation without any personal hassle or scrutiny. 

And if such donations are public then the donors would doubtless get flak for doing it for recognition. Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

If you were very rich (but not stupidly unbelievably rich) and yet wanted to enjoy a quiet life where you weren't constantly hounded and pressured by charities and people with "great business ideas", you too would be happy to wrap yourself in the cosy blanket of anonymity when giving away your money.

There is a sliding scale of concern, of course, but as others have said, it's pretty hard to imagine some nefarious motive for donating to the SWT. If it was a donation to a political party, I'd feel more aligned with your viewpoint.

I don't know anything about how quickly the trees would take over without being planted but I can say that if you want to plant woodland, it _is_ going to be expensive. My own tiny woodland first stage of planting has a tree density of about 3000 per hectare. If you plant a full hectare at that density, you are looking at £10k in saplings, guards and stakes, before you even start to consider any costs related to planting them. That estate has 7600 hectares, obviously you're not planting on top of a Munro, and I'm sure you're going to be doing it in stages over a prolonged period, but it's still £££s

Similarly, I'm pretty ignorant on deer grazing and travelling habits but if numbers are not being particularly aggressively reduced in the neighbouring estates, will deer from these areas not continue to filter in and eat all the young trees?

A climactic forest might thrive in harmony with a moderate deer density but if you are trying to re-establish a forest where there is only peat and heather just now, I would assume you need a very low deer density for that to succeed.

Perhaps the more realistic approach is to leave these areas to recover naturally after the peat harvesting has stopped, sheep have been moved on and deer have been massacred.

If that's what you do, I feel for you. Have a free virtual cuddle.

In my world, being able to give away £17.5 million qualifies for both of the above.

you too would be happy to wrap yourself in the cosy blanket of anonymity

The world of global money and politics very much has a 'blanket of anonymity'

There's no concern? Has the mysterious benefactor given this money completely free of expectation? There's no expectation of future influence from them on the land? That seems highly unlikely. 

Other than a possible immediate tax benefit to the donor there appears to be nothing else they can gain as once the money is donated it is pretty much out of their hands with regards to how it is spent, etc.
That's my understanding of the process.
Have you got evidence that the process in this case is different?
 

How would they exercise influence? I really think you are tilting at windmills here. Charity Boards are legally required to further the aims of the charity independently. It's not a situation like political "donations".

My point about giving money while staying pretty anonymous was that someone who has say £300 million, where their name and fortune isn't the subject of youtube documentaries and so on, so they can still maintain a relative level of anonymity, especially if they spend their time mixing with others who might be of a similar wealth level and therefore don't care too much. Compared to this, someone who has £100 billion can't get away with being an "anonymous" rich person. Ever. Anywhere. So the point about anonymous donations is probably just meaningless for them, because it wouldn't result in them getting any less attention.

Well, yes, but you and I have the same blanket of anonymity too, the circumstances are just a bit different: We don't have enough money for anyone to _care_ about looking at us, writing about us or bugging us for cash

Similar to Factor and MG, this really feels like a stretch with not even a hint of justification. If what you are saying was a thing that could be done with established charities that have been running for years and are used to dealing with 10s or 100s of £millions, surely Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch would just have accepted big donations from the countries that get pilloried by them every year and turned into lapdogs - which has not happened. It's not even like a one-off £17.5 million is a lot of money for the SWT - they are raking in about £80 million a year.

Extraordinary assertions require extraordinary evidence and so far there doesn't seem to be any evidence.

A few other things to help frame this in a less nefarious manner:

£17.5 million is a lot of money to me and you but it might well be that to the benefactor, it just isn't. Depending on what their net worth is.

The benefactor might be looking at a choice between paying the government £10 million in tax or giving £17.5 million to the SWT - you only have to like the SWT's aims about twice as much as what the gov is doing to see the latter as a much more attractive prospect.

Word on the Ullapool street is that it's Trump and once the trees and wildlife are in there's going to be exclusive bare knuckle beaver fighting and naked lynx wrestling. Putin and his cronies will love it.

Not sure how comparable to the SWT donation but the NTS bought Mar Lodge in the mid 1990s with a large donation from a mysterious 'Easter Trust' (rumoured that it was linked to the then Prince of Wales) which came with conditions that meant a large part of the land had to stay being managed as a traditional hunting estate. 

Don't joke -it's not so long since some Russian oligarch(s] tried to. buy Gruinard Island! As if it hadn't  been polluted s enough in the past! by the British government! 

That'll be next to the NATO refilling station and 'Z berths'. Can't think why that would have caught their eye...it could get very hot (sooner than we think).

Somewhat ironic given the role played by Loch Ewe vis a vis Russia in WW2 ,  From Arctic Convoy assembly point to NATO  refuelling depot.

"Failte gu tir an airm"( Calum Domhnallach)

The way things are going it could become an assembly point for Atlantic Convoys taking supplies to Canada and Greenland.