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Forming a partnership during a pandemic is an interesting experience. Some of your would-be partners are focused purely on keeping their heads above water, some are just taking each day as it comes, some are battering on just as they’ve always done and a few are simply desperate for conversation. Persuading people to think about joining a new approach at a time of uncertainty comes with its challenges, but in many ways, the turmoil of 2020 has underlined the need for new ways forward and new supportive relationships. East West Wild is pulling up to the launchpad with rewilding as a route to Green Recovery very much in mind.
The proposal is that a partnership of communities and landowners, collaborating across a large Highland landscape, can use nature as a catalyst for social and economic regeneration. Nature-based businesses, with a clear reliance on the ecological health of the land, have an integral dependency on the sustainable use of nature and an obvious interest in seeing it prosper.
We have the tools to make this work. We know that restoring fully functioning natural processes can bring dynamism back into vegetation, richness into our soils and a surge in wildlife as insects, birds, fish and mammals find their ways into the habitats emerging across the landscape. We also know that people’s quality of life benefits hugely from connections with nature and the land, whether that’s through work, leisure time or, ideally, both. Last but certainly not least, the evidence is mounting that sustainable, nature-based businesses are an increasingly viable way of creating jobs and bringing income into local communities.
With support from Rewilding Europe, we commissioned a scoping study of nature-based business opportunities in the East West Wild area. By the time you read this, the report will be finalised, but the message in the draft is clear: this landscape has very significant untapped potential that can be unlocked by combining rewilding with collaboration across a wide area. The study’s findings recommend both building on the economic activities already in place in the area and adopting some new approaches.
For instance, hunting, fishing and tourism are to remain important pillars of the area’s economy, with the same activities taking place in a landscape evolving under natural processes, offering new experiences of the natural world. The trends in the data on the tourism market both internationally and in Scotland shows that a greater variety of visitors will be drawn into the stories of nature resurging here, to submerge themselves in that and to share the character, knowledge and traditions of the people who live and work here. With visitors looking for more personal and immersive experiences, tourism of all kinds can sustain more high quality and nature-linked jobs, contributing to increasingly vibrant communities.
Additional nature-based activities can also come into play, building further on existing livelihoods and adding new ones. Nature-friendly forms of forestry allow timber and other forest products to be processed by people who live here, so that the value of the finished items stays in the local economy. In the future, some of the quality timber grown in this way will find its way into sustainable, carbon-storing housing that could be built by local construction companies to meet one of the most pressing local needs here. These approaches to forestry provide smoother income streams than conventional clear-felling, helping to sustain more consistent employment in forest and woodland management.
Some opportunities are completely new, such as the possibility of payment for ecosystem services, particularly carbon sequestration, becoming a significant source of income from native woodland planting and peatland restoration. Other possibilities lie in taking fresh approaches to old practices: regenerative or ‘wild’ grazing to restore soil health; developing local energy distribution networks for micro renewable sources like solar power (yes, in the Highlands!); and local processing of wild food like venison or botanically based spirits can all play a part. Each of these activities can connect people with the land and give more reasons to work with the grain of nature.
Our immediate focus is on forming an initial partnership of landowners, communities and businesses and to use this first alliance as a focal point for funding to develop these concepts into concrete plans and then action. The signs from at least one potential major funder are positive and it feels as though an initial partnership can take the first real steps on this journey in what remains of 2020. If, together, they can pull it off and generate a little momentum, the hope is that more and more stakeholders will join and perhaps start to write a new chapter for this many-storied landscape.
East West Wild is generously funded by Rewilding Europe.