Uphill battle to make money from rewilding

Lofty goal: People admiring a lake in Scotland. Highlands Rewilding hopes to bring back native flora and fauna through its efforts. — AFP

Edinburgh: On a remote peninsular of Scotland, there’s an experiment underway to put a US dollar value on nature restoration – the first step to turning stunning landscapes around the world into assets that some investors hope will soon be worth fortunes.

Highlands Rewilding earlier this year bought a 1,370ha estate called Tayvallich on a tongue of land on the country’s west coast for £10.5mil. The company plans to restore native fens, juniper heath and fragments of temperate Atlantic rainforest that have been lost due to decades of overgrazing by sheep and deer.