Nature Restoration at Landscape Scale

https://nnr.nature.scot/professional-advice/land-and-sea-management/managing-land/nature-restoration-landscape-scale

We are in a nature/climate emergency. The Scottish Biodiversity Strategy (SBS) sets out an ambitious vision to restore and regenerate nature across Scotland by 2045. This will help us to restore nature; reduce carbon emissions and adapt to climate change by restoring healthy ecosystems that can reduce flood risk and protect water supplies. These actions will help nature, our communities, land managers and businesses adapt to climate change.

To do that we need to accelerate and scale up nature restoration at landscape scale, and target nature restoration at the most important landscapes to help us adapt to climate change.

NatureScot is leading on action 2.1 in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy Delivery Plan to:

“Collate, review and prioritise all the landscape scale nature restoration projects across Scotland. Using this spatial evidence, NatureScot will identify and help facilitate partnership projects for six exemplar large scale landscape restoration areas with significant woodland components by 2025. By the end of 2026 those projects will have engaged with communities; developed deliverable action plans; identified funding (and where appropriate private finance) to deliver the outcomes required by 2030 and beyond.”

We have started work on this action and during 2024/25 built a new spatial dataset of landscape scale projects across Scotland. We will be consulting on the projects identified, the priorities for the future and a list of candidate ‘exemplars’ in Summer 2025.

To find out more about the project please contact brendan.turvey@nature.scot

For further information see these Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).

Case studies

Landscape scale nature restoration is an essential part of the solution to the climate and biodiversity crises, and is key to the delivery of the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy. Only healthy functioning ecosystems can support our societies now and in the future. This does not mean abandoning current land and water management, some of which is vital to ecosystem regeneration, but it means a different approach to using the land and sea.

The case studies highlighted below demonstrate the ways in which we can restore nature alongside existing land use. These build on previous learning summarised on Scotland's Environment website.