‘Britain’s Yellowstone’: restoration project aims to take the greed out of land acquisition
A nature restoration company has bought 7,500 acres of Northumbrian moorland for £8.5 million, starting a large rewilding project that aims to eventually hand the land to a charity or local community once investors have been repaid. To buy the Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Restore secured a £4.5 million loan from Triodos Bank along with private investment. The company is now looking for another £4 million to fully fund its 20-year plan. Once those financial commitments are cleared, Restore plans to transfer the entire 7,500-acre estate to a community trust or charity.
The purchase of Emblehope Moor by nature restoration company Restore is the centrepiece of an ambitious plan to turn a large group of estates in northern England into a wild refuge described as “Britain’s Yellowstone”. The organisation wants to show that private investment can help pay for large-scale nature recovery without keeping permanent private ownership of rural land, according to The Guardian. “We want to prove that the bank is paid back, investors get their two-times return but we don’t need to become the next for ever laird,” said Benedict Macdonald, an environmental writer and the founder and director of Restore, in comments reported by The Guardian.
Under the funding model, investors will receive twice the amount they put in, while the bank loan will also be repaid.
“We’re keen to leave a well-funded community project for the future. It’s not an aggressive land-holding model; it’s both a capitalist and community model and I want it to become the national model for the uplands – we’ve got to take the greed out of it for it to work.”