Landscape scale nature restoration - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Landscape scale nature restoration involves land managers working together to restore nature on a large scale, across multiple sites and land holdings to achieve benefits for nature and people.

These long-term collaborative nature restoration projects take many years to fully restore and regenerate habitats such as peatland, woodland and water courses.  

In this context, nature restoration means actively restoring habitats such as peatland, woodland or water courses. Other forms of work to support biodiversity are being supported and prioritised through different parts of the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy Delivery Plan (see FAQ on invasive non-native species and other species below).

For more information on landscape scale approaches in general, including the outputs from earlier work, see: Landscape scale nature restoration on Scotland’s Environment website.

We have included the larger, multi owner, collaborative projects that we are aware of.  We have not included projects being delivered on a single estate, or nature reserve or single land holding in our dataset at this stage.  Nor have we included short term interventions. We may include a wider range of projects in future.

We are in a nature and climate emergency. Only healthy, functioning ecosystems can support our societies now and in the future. This does not mean abandoning the way we currently manage land and water, but it means taking a different approach.

We need to accelerate and scale up nature restoration, targeting our efforts at the most important landscapes to help us restore nature, reduce carbon emissions and adapt to climate change. 

The Scottish Biodiversity Strategy describes the loss of nature as an emergency, and calls on Scotland to accelerate and scale up nature restoration.  Nature restoration not only supports biodiversity, it can help us mitigate climate change (by reducing carbon emissions) and adapt to climate change (by restoring healthy ecosystems that reduce flood risk and protect water quality). 

These are ‘nature based solutions’ and can help deliver the aims of the Climate Change Plan and the Scottish National Adaptation Plan.

NatureScot has been tasked to identify exemplar projects that demonstrate how landscape scale approaches can accelerate and scale up nature recovery; attract private investment and deliver climate adaptation.

The exemplars will be ‘lighthouse’ projects where we will work with partners to demonstrate best practice in nature restoration, across a range of land uses and habitats, with a particular focus on woodland creation and restoration. 

They have no specific status, or funding, they are not designations or ‘zones’ and have no statutory basis.

The list of 9 exemplar projects is available on our Nature Resoration at Landscape Scale page.

The individual landscape scale projects will engage with communities at the local level. Indeed, many of the existing projects such as Cairngorms Connect, Living Landscapes, rainforest restoration projects and Climate Forests have been engaging with communities for several years. And several of the projects in our dataset are community led (such as Tarras Valley, Glenkens, Appin and Glen Creran). We will encourage the highest standards of community engagement across all projects and will apply reflexive learning to improve the process as we go.

In many cases nature restoration can be delivered alongside existing land use, including farming, forestry, sporting use and recreation. Landscape scale restoration is not about ‘rewilding’ the whole of Scotland or stopping existing land use. It’s about reducing the pressures on nature (such as grazing, and the impact of invasive non-native species such as rhododendron and mink) and creating healthy ecosystems alongside food production and other forms of land use. See these case studies for some examples.

Some of the landscape scale projects in Scotland, which are being led by other partners, are adopting elements of a ‘rewilding’ approach, but the majority are restoring nature alongside existing land use. We support a balanced approach that restores nature but maintains food production, forestry, sporting and recreational uses – aligned with the integrated land use approach set out in the Land use Strategy, which can deliver multiple benefits from the same piece of land.

Nature doesn’t recognise man-made boundaries. The best way to reduce the pressures on nature is to tackle these across large areas. For example, deer and both invasive species and plants move across land holdings. One land manager can tackle these pressures, but will find it more difficult to restore nature if deer or invasive species come on to their land from neighbouring land holdings.  Equally, restoring rivers to reduce flood risk is best planned across a whole catchment, across multiple land holdings. 

To ensure success and to reduce the costs of action we need to work collaboratively, across public, private, NGO and community land holdings to restore nature at landscape scale.

The benefits of a landscape scale approach include:

• Economies of scale, such as for procurement, wildlife management, planning and survey work
• Efficiencies for agencies – it’s more cost effective to assess, engage in and fund restoration over a larger area than to work with individual land managers in a fragmented way
• Opportunities to attract nature finance, by grouping smaller projects to a scale that is more likely to attract investment, such as from the Nature Investment Partnership and other initiatives
• Better ability to manage deer densities, invasive species and other pressures on nature such as diffuse pollution
• Opportunities to create nature networks and restore ecosystems at their functional scale (such as a whole catchment, adjoining areas of peatland, a strath).
• Reduced flood risk can be maximised by designing restoration across larger areas, and risks can be managed across whole catchments.

The Scottish Biodiversity Strategy vision is to restore nature across Scotland by 2045.  But we can’t restore nature everywhere at the same time.  Neither the agencies involved, the fundings schemes that support restoration, nor the supply chain can support restoration everywhere all at once. 

We therefore need to prioritise our efforts and build a roadmap of restoration out to 2045.  We intend to focus our efforts now on the Areas of Focus and the Exemplars, where we can test and demonstrate the best ways to restore nature and then replicate these in other landscapes.  We also intend to focus on those landscapes which can best support climate adaptation first.

We will then move through the roadmap, supporting a wider range of projects across Scotland towards 2045.  This is about the sequence in which we restore nature, not where we do and don’t. The roadmap we develop will be flexible and respond to feedback, new policies and action on the ground.

We have gathered data on all the landscape scale projects which NatureScot is funding, is involved in or is aware of.  We have not included:

• Projects in which we have had no or very limited involvement
• Smaller, short-term projects
• Projects on single land holdings
• Projects in the very early stages of development

If you think your project should be in our dataset, or you are developing a new project, please email details of the project, including a map and list of partners to [email protected].

Yes. Both NatureScot and other agencies will continue to fund projects elsewhere where they meet the criteria for the grants schemes and where budgets allow.

No. We will target these projects but continue to fund other projects where they meet the relevant criteria. As projects mature and as increasing amounts of nature finance come in to the market, we will target public funds at the areas where they can have the greatest impact and deliver best value.

Most of the nature conservation projects on the Scottish islands are controlling invasive non native species, such as the Orkney Native Wildlife Project, Hebridean Mink Project and Uist Wader Project.  These are being prioritised through a separate process linked to the development of the Scottish INNS plan.  The emerging Shetland Peatland Partnership is in the dataset, as is Skye Connect.

Invasive non-native species projects are important and are being prioritised through a separate process linked to the Scottish INNS plan, under development.

Single species conservation projects such as Saving Wildcats, the South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project, Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels and Species on the Edge are important and are also being prioritised by different teams and different actions in the SBS Delivery Plan. 

This project is focussed on landscape scale projects which are actively restoring habitats, rivers and ecosystems – not just targeting one species or pressure.

No. These are voluntary projects where local partnerships are working in collaboration with land managers. Landscape scale restoration projects are not designations or ‘zones’ and do not force the participation of land managers. Nor do they constrain land use.  They are co-designed and collaborative.  See these case studies for existing, successful collaborations.

No. We have limited budgets for nature restoration and must prioritise where we spend these. We will support as many projects as we can, but will rely on other sources of funding such as Landscape Connections , the Environmental Funders Network, philanthropy, nature finance; Landscape Enterprise Networks and the amazing work of the environmental NGOs to fund nature restoration in Scotland. And of course some land owners are financing this work themselves as part of initiatives such as Wildlife Estates Scotland and Farm Clusters or because they want to restore nature for other reasons. This is a team effort.

No.  We will continue to offer advice where we can and will continue to fulfill our statutory role on protected areas, species and licensing. But we will focus our efforts on the exemplars and those projects where multiple agencies have an interest in the outcomes and/or where they can best support climate adaptation. Our engagement in projects led by others will be lower. This is part of our commitment to delivering Public Service Reform.

One of the main benefits of this project is that we can better align the resources (people and £s) of agencies behind the most important projects, making public funding go further. This is a key aim of Public Service Reform. NatureScot is working with Scottish Government, Scottish Forestry, Forestry and Land Scotland, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Scottish Water to prioritise landscape scale projects and align our resources.

NatureScot is also working with other agencies to build a new market for nature finance in Scotland, to support the aims of Ministers set out in the Natural Capital Markets Framework, published in November 2024.  See the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland and Nature Investment Partnership websites for more detail on what we are doing to attract nature finance to Scotland.

We hope to attract an increasing amount of investment to nature restoration, alongside the existing public grants and other sources, helping us to scale up delivery on the ground. We will be developing an Investment Prospectus to help do this later in 2025 as set out the Biodiversity Investment Plan. 

The list of priorities and exemplars is available on our Nature Resoration at Landscape Scale page.

NatureScot has built a new spatial dataset and we have used GIS data to quantify the restoration potential of each project. This has been combined with our knowledge of the project and what it is achieving; local plans and strategies and then we have discussed this with SEPA, Scottish Water and Forestry and Land Scotland to prioritise the projects collectively. We’ve used an objective scoring system to assess the projects in a fair and consistent manner. But the priorities are not set in stone, and we will review them annually.

Landscape scale restoration projects are one way of delivering these outcomes.  We will target our efforts on 30x30 and nature networks at the projects we think can best deliver these, demonstrating a route to delivery for others to follow.

The priorities we have identified are existing landscape projects. They are primarily about where we target our effort, resources and funding. These priorities to not change other policies and will help support delivery on the ground