Now is the perfect time for philanthropy,
private and public investors, to get together and face down the existential crises
of climate meltdown and biodiversity collapse, because while this place looks like paradise, the
Tayvallich Estate owned by Highlands Rewilding, we have to reverse these catastrophic problems.
At Highlands Rewilding we hope to help with that process using land like this in Scotland that
we own that has fantastic opportunity to show what can be done in terms of nature recovery. Two
examples looking at this land here, among many, the temperate rainforest that you see here exists
in remnants all the way down the peninsula, we're going to turn that into a massive forest
and we can begin with the end in mind because over the water there is the Taynish National Reserve
and that's one of the most impressive rainforest remnants in the whole of the United Kingdom.
This big peninsula here is going to look like that in the future, and offshore we have forests
too, they're kelp forests, they take carbon down out of the atmosphere in enormous quantities, we
have many different habitats that can demonstrate all the different kinds of nature uplift that
are available to us, then we move quite quickly elsewhere not just in Scotland or in the UK but
taking the model overseas as well so that we can play hopefully a major role in helping lead
the fight back against these monster problems. So how are we going to go about this? We
have a way of operating that we think is pretty unique in the way it combines
three things. The first is data. We have really good scientists in our team
and they're working with leading universities to provide data and information on carbon,
biodiversity, other elements of natural Capital, that will make nature recovery more investable,
confidently for investors. The second thing is that we're a mass ownership company. We
have 809 shareholders at the moment and no one person or organisation in there owns more
than 12.9 percent of the organisation and that gives us a degree of flexibility and patience
that normal companies generally can't have, and then the third thing is that we're
rooted in the communities where we work, we're a creature of those communities, most of the
people who work for us are from those communities. For example in Tayvallich we have agreed a
memorandum of understanding with the local community aiming for a ground-breaking
win-win relationship. In this, Highlands Rewilding promises to grow community
prosperity in the ways the community wants. In return the community helps us to deliver the
ethical level of profitability that we will need if we're going to be able to take nature
recovery to scale. So together we create an exemplar that will hopefully help Highlands
Rewilding lead the way, fuelled by our investors, public, private and philanthropic, to
the livable future that we all long for.
