Green entrepreneur aims to combat climate crisis with rewilding project on newly-acquired estate overlooking Loch Ness
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A 500-hectare estate overlooking Loch Ness is set to be transformed into an "open natural laboratory" to advance rewilding and fight the climate crisis.
Solar energy entrepreneur and former scientific director at Greenpeace Jeremy Leggett, who has bought Bunloit Estate near Drumnadrochit, will work in partnership with Rewilding Europe on what he hopes will become a flagship project.
His vision is to show how restoring the natural world can become a profitable and environmentally-friendly means of land management and create new jobs.
The plan is to revert generations of land management practices and to restore peatlands, return commercial plantations of non-native species of trees to mixed woodlands and to significantly increase biodiversity.
Mr Leggett, who envisages a lot of local community involvement in the project, also hopes the estate will employ local rangers while a small number of eco-homes will be built by timber construction company Makar of which Mr Leggett is a board member.
