Publications
We are dedicated to making our work as transparent and useful as possible and manage our estates as 'open laboratories' for research nature recovery. Our in-house science team regularly carries out research and collaborates with external researchers. We make data and findings available whenever possible to accelerate nature-based solutions, reverse biodiversity loss and draw investment into science-led nature recovery and rewilding.
We are also involved in a number of research projects and welcome enquiries about new collaborations.
Below are recent research papers, reports and consultation responses published by Highlands Rewilding, reporting on research conducted on our estates, or involving members of our science team.
Our reports
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Too few oysters, too many deer
Highlands Rewilding’s fourth annual natural capital report details a wide array of monitoring techniques deployed across three highly surveyed open air laboratories.
The report's findings demonstrate that land which contains incredible natural diversity would still benefit from significant biodiversity improvements, particularly by reducing deer numbers and proactive coastline restoration. The unique depth and breadth of this data collection and analysis makes a significant contribution to understanding patterns of biodiversity and the embryonic natural capital market in Scotland, helping ensure this market develops to encompass high quality and consistent monitoring, vital for reversing current biodiversity loss.
The report focuses on a year of baseline biodiversity monitoring at the Tayvallich estate on the west coast of Scotland, an area renowned for its natural beauty, along with monitoring and restorative updates from its two other Scottish estates, Bunloit, on the banks of Loch Ness, and Beldorney, in Aberdeenshire.
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An update on developing collaborative enterprises with the local communities living adjacent to the lands that Highlands Rewilding manage.
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Building Natural Capital — PDF
As we advance our model for nature recovery, community prosperity and ethical profitability, both Highlands Rewilding and the natural capital landscape around us are developing quickly. We provide insight into these developments in our latest annual report.
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This roadmap is intended as a basis for participatory development of Highlands Rewilding’s community engagement processes. This will help to improve our existing approach to engagement and help to embed community perspectives, knowledge and aspirations in our work.
This roadmap builds on a review of standards and examples of good practice in Scotland and elsewhere and independent research being done on our own work.
In this document, we adopt a definition of engagement as a process by which individuals, groups or organisations choose to take an active role in decisions which affect them. This engagement can take many forms, and our draft roadmap details six key steps.
We give details of each of these steps in the document and welcome continued feedback on all of them. Please get in touch via info@highlandsrewilding.co.uk.
We are also now developing specific engagement plans with local communities around our estates at Bunloit, Beldorney and Tayvallich.
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Second Natural Capital Report — Beldorney — PDF
This report follows one year on from our first report and focuses on Beldorney Estate in Aberdeenshire. It paints a picture of tremendous potential for increasing both carbon storage and biodiversity.
Through this work, we aim to develop standardised monitoring protocols that can be repeated on a regular basis at all of our rewilding projects, to build on the baseline work and quantify the impact of land-management interventions aiming to boost carbon sequestration and biodiversity.
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First Natural Capital Report — Bunloit — PDF
This report details the creation of an inventory of carbon and biodiversity within the highly diverse habitats of the 511 hectare Bunloit estate. It uncovers uncovered some interesting and unexpected conclusions, including that the Bunloit Estate is a source of carbon emissions, and the discovery of lichen communities of international importance.This report details the creation of an inventory of carbon and biodiversity within the highly diverse habitats of the 511 hectare Bunloit estate. It uncovers uncovered some interesting and unexpected conclusions, including that the Bunloit Estate is a source of carbon emissions, and the discovery of lichen communities of international importance.
Research from our sites
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Connor Lovell, Nathalie Pettorelli, Terence P. Dawson
In the degraded and modified environment of the Scottish Highlands, novel ungulate communities have arisen following local extinctions, reintroductions, and the introduction of non-native species. An understanding of the dynamics and interactions within these unique mammal communities is important as many of these mammals represent keystone species with disproportionate impacts on the environment. Using a camera trap survey, we investigated land cover preferences and spatiotemporal interactions within a Scottish ungulate community: the sika deer (Cervus nippon), the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), the red deer (Cervus elaphus), and the wild boar (Sus scrofa). We used generalised linear models to assess land cover preferences and the effect of human disturbance; spatiotemporal interactions were characterised using time interval modelling. We found that sika deer and roe deer preferred coniferous plantations and grasslands, with sika deer additionally preferring woodland. For red deer, we found a slight preference for wetland over woodland; however, the explained variance was low. Finally, wild boar preferred grassland and woodland and avoided coniferous plantations, heathland, and shrubland. Contrary to our expectations, we found no evidence that human disturbance negatively impacted ungulates' distributions, potentially because ungulates temporally avoid humans or because dense vegetation cover mitigates the impacts of humans on their distributions. Furthermore, we detected a spatiotemporal association between sika deer and roe deer. Although the underlying cause of this is unknown, we hypothesise that interactions such as grazing facilitation or an anti-predator response to culling could be driving this pattern. Our work provides a preliminary analysis of the dynamics occurring within a novel ungulate community and also highlights current knowledge gaps in our understanding of the underlying mechanisms dictating the observed spatiotemporal associations.
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Traps, apps and maps: to what extent do they provide decision-grade data on biodiversity?
Hannah Rudman, Ben Hart, Maggie English, Craig Turner, Elisa Fuentes-Montemayor & Mark S. Reed
Ecosystem services arising from the restoration of natural capital are now increasingly recognised as environmental opportunities and monetised, with international climate negotiations focussing on the need for investment into natural capital, and the finance sector pledging to invest. The finance sector has called for decision-grade, asset level data about nature projects in order to facilitate their reporting to investors. This paper offers a case study of novel digital data collection methods used to establish a baseline of faunal biodiversity in a Scottish nature-restoration project on the Bunloit estate which has secured private natural capital investment. Digital camera traps, acoustic sensors with eDNA samples and apps were used to create digital maps to ensure annual survey replication, and citizen scientist engagement. The results were classified by both professional ecologists and citizen scientists. We discuss how the digital data gathered through traps, apps and maps in the case study can be qualified as decision-grade data, according to the Taskforce for Nature-based Financial Disclosure’s specification. We conclude that decision-grade biodiversity data may be produced by practitioners, with limited resources, and make recommendations for data collection and governance methods to ensure nature restoration projects generate decision-grade data for ecosystem services markets.
General research
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An assessment of future rewilding potential in the United Kingdom
Led by Highlands Rewildisg’s Co-chief Scientist, Dr Calum Brown, this paper research uses detailed land use modelling to estimate the potential area over which rewilding could occur in Great Britain, taking into account climate change, economic conditions and requirements for other land uses including agriculture and forestry. Areas from 5,000 to 7,000 km2 were projected to be available for rewilding by 2080. This research adds to evidence that we can restore nature alongside providing food, timber and other essential products if the way we use land is appropriately managed.
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An earth system governance research agenda for carbon removal
Sean Low, Miranda Boettcher, Shinichiro Asayama, Chad Baum, Amanda Borth, Calum Brown, Forrest Clingerman, Peter Dauvergne, Kari De Pryck, Aarti Gupta, Matthias Honegger, Dominic Lenzi, Renate Reitsma, Felix Schenuit, Celina Scott-Buechler, Jose Maria Valenzuela
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) – the creation, enhancement, and upscaling of carbon sinks – has become a pillar of national and corporate commitments towards Net Zero emissions, as well as pathways towards realizing the Paris Agreement's ambitious temperature targets. In this perspective, we explore CDR as an emerging issue of Earth System Governance (ESG).
We draw on the results of a workshop at the 2022 Earth System Governance conference that mapped a range of actors, activities, and issues relevant to carbon removal, and refined them into research questions spanning four intersecting areas: modeling and systems assessment, societal appraisal, policy, and innovation and industry. We filter these questions through the five lenses of the ESG framework and highlight several key ‘cross-cutting’ issues that could form the basis of an integrated ESG research agenda on CDR.
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PDF of Toward quantification of the feasible potential of land-based carbon dioxide removal
Oliver Perkins, Peter Alexander, Almut Arneth, Calum Brown, James D. A. Millington, and Mark Rounsevell
Climate-change overshoot scenarios, where warming exceeds Paris Agreement limits before being brought back down, are highly dependent on land-based carbon dioxide removal(CDR). In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), such scenarios are supported by optimistic global assessments of the technical and economic potential for land-based CDR. However, a further type of potential—the ‘‘feasible’’ potential, which includes socio-cultural, environmental, and institutional factors—is noted in the AR6 but not quantified. Here, we set out research frameworks to work toward quantification of this feasible potential. We first acquire that quantifying the feasible potential will substantially reduce current assessed CARP potential. Second, we demonstrate how transdisciplinary methods are improving understanding of feasibility constraints on land-based CDR. Third, we explore frameworks for synthesizing these advances during the next IPCC assessment process. We conclude that the research community should carefully consider the use of techno-economic CDR assessments in evidence for policymakers.
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14191
Whitehorn, P. R., Seo, B., Comont, R. F., Rounsevell, M. & Brown, C.
Journal of Applied Ecology, 00, 1–15.
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Nature-based solutions are at the natural forefront of climate mitigation and recovery. Learn more about our research aims and methodologies.
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Highlands Rewilding has developed holistic biodiversity and carbon data acquisition-and-analysis, alongside a management service based on this data, which we will soon be able to offer on a win-win basis to others.
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To carry out our research strategies, we have partnered up with a group of both local and UK-wide conservation organisations, ecologists and scientific specialists to develop our surveying methods.