Article in The Times asks whether the new

More News

In a recent comment article in The Times, journalist Magnus Linklater, who is based in Scotland, wrote about the rewilding movement there. With thousands of acres of the Scottish countryside being reforested or “rewilded”, a new type of landowner is emerging. One, he writes, who is “more interested in turning farmland into forestry, or grouse moors into wilderness, than in tilling the soil or stalking deer. Thus it is that Anders Povlsen, the Danish billionaire, has overtaken the Duke of Buccleuch as Scotland’s largest landowner, and though he appears to break every rule in the SNP handbook — property magnate, foreign national, buying up thousands of acres of Scottish land — no word of criticism is voiced, presumably because he neither shoots nor fishes, so far as I know.”

It is not just Mr Polvsen of course. Many others have chosen to buy up Scottish estates, many in order to take advantage of the growing carbon market. The same is happening in Wales, where a recent article in Wales Online outlined the devastating impact that carbon offsetting is having on Welsh farming communities. British Airways, for example, recently bought a number of Welsh farms for the purposes of tree planting. As Geraint Davies, Labour MP for Swansea West put it, farming in Wales was being displaced "because of some sort of carbon offset to enable BA to fly more planes around the world".

In Scotland and the north of England, land prices are surging as investors look to buy up land and estates which they can use to offset their carbon emissions. A report from the Scottish Land Commission, for example, revealed that farmland values had risen by 31.2% in Scotland in 2021, compared with 6.2% across UK.

What does this change in land ownership mean for the people who both live and work in these areas? As Mr Linklater wrote in The Times, “for all their credentials as green campaigners, the new landowners have little interest in the needs of farmers, or their traditional partners the gamekeepers. Nevertheless, it is they who have formed the landscape that most country-lovers cherish.”

Gamekeepers, he explains, “are criticised for burning heather, but if they did not do so those much-loved purple hills would be nothing but rank overgrowth, highly vulnerable to wildfires. Gamekeepers get paid to do this by NatureScot, the environment agency. They are also funded to control predators — foxes and crows — that would otherwise greatly reduce the number and variety of wild birds, such as the sadly vanishing curlew and plover.”

But do this new breed of landowner recognise the work that gamekeepers do to manage and protect the countryside and the wildlife that live in it? “This is a battle for the heart of the countryside,” writes Mr Linklater. “There is a balance to be struck between the need to save the planet and the responsibility to protect those who live and work on the land. To the list of endangered species we may soon need to add farmers and their protectors — the gamekeepers.”