Annual Review 2024-25

We stand at the forefront of rewilding in the Scottish Highlands. Hopeful and bold, we are committed to creating nature-rich landscapes that include and support people. Focusing on Scotland’s spectacular Caledonian forest, we foster biodiversity and encourage natural processes essential to life.

Thank you to everyone who supported rewilding in the Scottish Highlands this year. This is our annual review covering the period from 1 February 2024 to 31 January 2025.

Below you’ll find our highlights and biggest achievements of the year, as well as our plans for the future. We have also included an annual financial breakdown, so you can see how we raise income and where it is spent.

This year, we brought people together to help secure the future of Scotland’s Caledonian pinewoods, hosting the country’s first Pinewood Conference in 20 years and launching a new partnership for their recovery. We also celebrated a record-breaking year for our Tree Seed Collection Project, with volunteers collecting 2.2 million rare seeds – enough to grow 1.5 million trees for rewilding across Scotland. We launched new projects to strengthen aspen networks and return red squirrels to parts of their former range, while the Dundreggan Rewilding Centre and Common Ground Forum were recognised at the Nature of Scotland Awards.

Find out more by reading on.

Highlights and Achievements

Scotland’s Pinewood Conference
The summer survey season culminated in Scotland’s first Pinewood Conference for 20 years in Fort William, where we highlighted the critical condition of these unique places and launched a partnership to help save them. Our Wild Pine Project also surveyed the largest Wild Pine site to date, with over 100 pines recorded within the woodland. The conference brought together 160 experts, landowners, managers, and enthusiasts who are interested in Caledonian pinewoods to examine how landscape scale management can lead to ecosystem recovery, focusing on western pinewoods. Read more here.

Nature of Scotland Awards 2024
Both the Dundreggan Rewilding Centre and the Common Ground Forum won awards at the Nature of Scotland Awards 2024 which recognises the very best in Scottish nature conservation and highlights excellence, collaboration and action for nature. Dundreggan Rewilding Centre was awarded the Nature Tourism Award, in recognition of its pioneering achievements in rewilding landscapes and people. The centre – the first of its kind in the world – received the prestigious accolade “for bringing people and nature together” at a ceremony held at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. Read the press release here.

Tree Seed Collection Project
Our volunteers collected over 2 million rare seeds to boost native woodlands and rainforest across Scotland. In partnership with Woodland Trust Scotland, we’re increasing the country’s availability of rare native tree seeds and smashed our first-year target. A team of more than 80 volunteers has collected 2.2 million seeds, enabling 1.5 million trees to be grown for rewilding across Scotland, hugely exceeding an initial target of 500,000 trees. The project focuses on rare tree species from Scotland’s surviving fragments of ancient woodland, including on Skye, the Western Isles and Orkney, and west coast temperate rainforest. Read more here.

Cairngorms Aspen Network
Launched our Cairngorms Aspen Network Project in partnership with Cairngorms National Park Authority to develop an exciting aspen network in the Cairngorms. Aspen is a scarce yet ecologically important tree. We are initially working on the development phase which involves mapping the location, condition and health of the current aspen trees in order to identify key sites and management priorities (e.g. fencing, growing and planting plans) for the delivery phase. The mapping will be essential for enabling an effective and strategic approach to aspen conservation. Read more about the project here.

Red Squirrel Reintroduction Project
The Scottish Highlands are the largest remaining stronghold for red squirrels in the UK, home to around 75% of the population. However, this population has traditionally been confined to the central and eastern Highlands, and red squirrels remain absent from much of their former range in the northwest. Since 2016, we have been working to reintroduce red squirrels to areas of their former range, with two new release sites created on the remote Drimnin Estate overlooking the Sound of Mull, and Ratagan on the Glenelg peninsula. Find out more about the project here.

Tauros Project
Launched the Tauros Project which could see the first introduction to the UK of a breed of huge wild cattle called tauros – effectively reintroducing the aurochs, the wild ancestor of all domestic cattle, four centuries after its extinction. We’re currently scoping the potential, drawing baselines of biodiversity, and establishing the feasibility of returning the muscular, long-horned tauros. They have been bred to be as similar as possible to the ancient aurochs – a mega-herbivore which for millennia played a vital role in shaping landscapes and boosting biodiversity across Europe, including Scotland. Read more about the project here.

Black Grouse Surveys
The first year of a new citizen science study in the Affric Highlands rewilding landscape near Inverness has found black grouse populations are recovering well at sites carrying out large-scale nature recovery, including restoration of native woods, peatlands and wetlands. The community-focused programme was launched by the Affric Highlands initiative and RSPB Scotland, working together with Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) and local landowners. The project builds on previous surveys by RSPB Scotland in the area since 2007, and included a team of volunteers for the first time. Read more about the surveys here.

Rewilding Nation Campaign
We’ve increased advocacy in collaboration with the Scottish Rewilding Alliance through the Rewilding Nation campaign – urging the Scottish government to commit to nature recovery across 30% of our land and seas. We’re thrilled this has been backed by actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Brian Cox, and Scottish sea shanty singer Nathan Evans. Our chief executive, Steve Micklewright, is the co-convener of the Scottish Rewilding Alliance and we’ve worked with numerous other eNGOs to facilitate greater change.

Looking to the future – Our plans for 2025-26

Missing Species Programme
We will launch a pioneering Missing Species Programme to bring back four of Scotland’s lost keystone animals – lynx, beavers, red squirrels, and modern-day aurochs – to the Scottish Highlands. The plans aim to tackle the nature and climate emergencies while generating significant benefits for communities, including through nature tourism. Keystone species play a vital role in healthy living ecosystems. Many such species are now fully or mostly missing from Scotland, one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries, where centuries of persecution and habitat destruction have caused localised extinctions or serious declines.

Beaver Reintroductions
Beavers have been missing for over 400 years after extinction in Scotland. In partnership with Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), we will apply for a licence to reintroduce families of beavers to the Glen Affric National Nature Reserve. We will also work in partnership with the Beaver Trust to explore the potential of reintroducing beavers to the Loch Ness area. Read more about beaver reintroductions here.

Lynx to Scotland
We will publish a major report on cross-sector discussions relating to potential reintroduction of lynx to Scottish Highlands. It will outline conclusions and recommendations agreed by a nine-month national discussion involving a diverse, cross-sector range of 53 stakeholders including farmer and landowner organisations, gamekeepers, foresters, tourism operators and conservationists. It will be the most detailed analysis yet of what a lynx reintroduction project in Scotland would need to do to ensure lynx and people could coexist.

Restoration of Athnamulloch Bothy
Set in the heart of beautiful Glen Affric, Athnamulloch is a traditional one-and-a-half-storey Highland cottage, now affectionately called ‘The bothy’ near Loch Affric. Owned by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), it has served as a base for Trees for Life since the 1990s – a vital part of the infrastructure in our mission to save and expand the area’s precious Caledonian forest. We will carry out vital restoration work using traditional skills to replace the lime mortar and apply a new lime render and limewash to return it to its historic and authentic appearance.