The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Estate may hold key to balancing people, profits and planet in rewilding projects north of the border
Peter Ranscombe visits Broughton Hall Estate in Yorkshire to learn about restoring the countryside and asks if Highland landowners can learn from it
As we climb further up the hillside, the trees and grass give way to moorland. There is a buzzard circling overhead, its mewing call echoing amid the morning’s drizzle.
Looking around at the patchwork landscape, we could be in Aberdeenshire, Moray, the Highlands or Orkney.
But this is no Highland hill or Grampian glen – this is Yorkshire.
Broughton Hall Estate, near Skipton in North Yorkshire, traces its roots back to 1097.
It has been home to the Tempest family for 32 generations, or more than 900 years.
On screen, it’s been the backdrop for television series including Gentleman Jack, Made In Chelsea, and the remake of All Creatures Great And Small, starring Nairn lad Nicholas Ralph.
As well as the grand facade of Broughton Hall itself, the estate has many of the features you’d expect from an ancient country pile trying to make ends meet in the 21st Century.
It boasts 19 holiday cottages as well as its Avalon spa, Halo coworking space and Walled Garden Bistro.
Yet the estate’s current owner, Roger Tempest, has also shifted its broader focus.
Call it “nature recovery” or “rewilding”, but restoring the countryside to better balance profits and people with the planet’s health is the latest thread in a longerrunning story.
Economists and environmentalists have tried for decades to measure the financial contribution of the countryside.
They continue to do so in the hope our capitalist system will start to value and not destroy it.
As the effects of climate change bite, the need to plant trees and restore peat bogs to absorb and store carbon dioxide, and soak up an expected rise in rainfall is becoming ever more acute.
Titanic actor Leonardo DiCaprio shone a spotlight on the topic earlier this month when he told his 61 million Instagram followers about the Scottish Rewilding Alliance’s pressure on the Scottish Government to commit to nature recovery.
At Broughton, that focus spans three land management practices, covering rewilding, regenerative agriculture and small-scale horticulture – growing vegetables and ingredients for herbal remedies – which together will cover nearly 1,300 acres of the 2,545-acre estate.
Kelly Hollick, Broughton’s creative director and rewilding project manager, said: “We’ve now planted 330,000 trees over 330 hectares (about 815 acres), which gives a mix of high forest, wood pasture, scrub and open glades, with wildflower meadows.
“As well as the woodlands, our rewilding includes the restoration of wetlands – which we’re starting to look at now.
“It also includes introducing beavers to one of our woodlands.
“And it covers our 48 hectares (nearly 119 acres) of moorland, which we want to naturally regenerate.”
Alastair Driver, director of the Rewilding Britain charity, has acted as a consultant for the project.
He told The Press and Journal the equivalent of six full-time jobs had been created at Broughton.
The equivalent of two full-time jobs were lost due to the end of sheep farming on land being rewilded.
It’s early days for the project, which started in 2020, but Ms Hollick believes the rewilding is also boosting tourism by attracting visitors to Broughton’s health and wellbeing retreats.
“We’re definitely seeing more and more people coming because of us being a natural recovery site,” she added.
From the cusp of the Yorkshire Dales to Alladale in Sutherland, where Paul Lister created his 23,000acre wilderness reserve after he bought the estate in 2003.
His family previously owned the MFI chain.
“It’s been a long road,” Mr Lister said, adding: “Since the focus has moved towards nature, wildlife, wellness, photography and yoga, our business is 10 times the size of what it was 20 years ago.
“It’s grown exponentially in the past five years, particularly since we moved away from offering deer stalking.”
Alladale has grown its team from three to around 15 people, and is about to recruit a sales and marketing manager.
The reserve turned over around £780,000 last year by providing accommodation, hosting retreats and other tourism.
Mr Lister continued:
“Last year was our best to date. This year, if we could get to £900,000, then that would be good. And if next year was £1 million, then excellent.
“It’s a small business, but it gives other owners the chance to see how we do it then adapt it to their estates.”
Away from tourism, rewilding experts are chomping at the bit for investment.
This can come from one or more of the dedicated natural capital funds set up by pension firms, insurance firms and other traditional financiers seeking a return.
There are also biodiversity impact tokens, mirroring existing voluntary markets in woodland and peatland credits, through which ecosystem services are bought and traded.
Soar energy entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett said: “We are finding big pension funds and other asset managers are interested in setting up specialist nature funds, so that’s a positive development.”
Mr Leggett sold renewable power developer Solarcentury to Norwegian state energy giant Statkraft in 2020 for £117.7m.
He then bought Aberdeenshire’s Beldorney, Loch Ness’s Bunloit and Argyll’s Tayvallich estates.
His Highlands Rewilding company is about to launch a £100m fundraising round for nature restoration, buying more land and managing other estates for existing owners.
“This isn’t just business school speak or start-up speak from people who haven’t done anything,” Mr Leggatt said, adding, “We’ve been operating for four years now, so we know we can put in a good performance.
“Public and private finance will be important to us, but so too will be philanthropic finance to support housebuilding.”
When it comes to rewilding credits or biodiversity impact tokens, progress has been slower.
“I think the word is probably ‘faltering’,” said Scottish rewilding pioneer Pete Cairns.
He helped spark the rewilding movement as a photojournalist before launching Cairngormsbased charity Scotland: The Big Picture in 2018.
Mr Cairns said: “There’s an aspiration and a lot of concepts around this model, but also lots of players each pulling in different directions and claiming they have the ‘golden ticket’.
“I don’t think any of them have, and instead there’s a movement to accepting there’s no onesize-fits-all blueprint for Scotland’s landscape, so it’s evolving into a case-bycase basis. The problem is the whole scene is moving so quickly.”