As rewilding accelerates around the world, the global movement's first dedicated centre has opened in the Scottish Highlands.
, or fairies? Yes. Does a scarab-shaped woodland dor beetle squeak when you pick it up? Yes. Does each of the 18 letters in the Gaelic alphabet have a tree associated with it? Yes. Is the brown long-eared bat's hearing so good it can make out the pitter-patter-pit-pat of an insect walking on a leaf? Yes. Can you eat bracken? Yes. Should you eat bracken? No.
The origins of the visitor campus began five years ago when Trees for Life realised there was a major disconnect between people and landscape in the UK and set out to address the imbalance. The result is a free-to-access education centre and volunteer basecamp with training programmes, guided forest tours, seminars, nature workshops and activities, where the idea is to increase ecological literacy in the fightback against climate breakdown.
On site is a research library, a bothy-style projection room, 40-bed accommodation complex for volunteers and researchers, plus classrooms and a natural history exhibition to help encourage rewilding in action. Meanwhile, outdoors are three educational walking trails, a dipping pond and tree nursery, where up to 100,000 saplings are grown each year to help revitalise the Caledonian forest. In places, Scots pine has been brought back to areas where it hadn't grown for generations.
Even so, across Scotland these days there's a feeling of healing. Rewilding is gaining momentum at pace across the country, and a new scenario of landscape-scale projects overseen by alliances of environmental stakeholders is evolving – and all with one purpose in mind: to make Scotland one of the world's most influential rewilding nations.
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