Moray charities The Cabrach Trust and Trees For Life get behind Highland Rewilding vision to grow 'Forest of Hope' across Moray-Aberdeenshire border as COP26 legacy
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TWO Moray charities have got behind a vision to grow a "Forest of Hope" across the Moray-Aberdeenshire border as a lasting legacy of the COP26 Climate Summit.
Local rural regeneration charity The Cabrach Trust is involved in a collaboration led by Highlands Rewilding – a mass-ownership nature-recovery company founded by climate change pioneer Dr Jeremy Leggett – to create the woodland across the Cabrach and Glass.
A second Moray-based organisation, Trees For Life, along with The Woodland Trust, has offered up native saplings and expertise for the landscape-scale project.
Dr Leggett bought the 860-acre over-grazed Beldorney Estate, in the Upper Deveron Valley, in May this year. There his team plans to expand their nature recovery efforts already under way at Bunloit Estate, near Loch Ness, which he bought last year.
The seeds for the COP26 Forest of Hope concept took root when Nick Henry, CEO of Climate Action and organiser of the summit's Climate Action Innovation Zone, suggested the idea to Dr Leggett.
Several neighbouring landowners showed their willingness to play a part.
The Cabrach Trust undertook to explore a regional, landscape-scale, riparian planting project in the Upper Deveron Valley.
The trust will also begin planting on its own land in the river corridor, starting this month, as a central feature of its new wellbeing trails.
As soon as permission can be obtained from Scottish Forestry, Highlands Rewilding aims to plant a quarter of a million mixed-species native broadleaf trees at Beldorney alone.
A kilometre of pristine native woodland already exists along the River Deveron at Beldorney and offers a small glimpse into how the Forest of Hope will look.
Dr Leggett, a former Greenpeace scientific director, said: "Our definition of rewilding is people-centric in large part because we cannot hope to stop climate meltdown and biodiversity collapse without the full fighting involvement of communities.
"Hence the mass-ownership model we are intent on for Highlands Rewilding and therefore the Beldorney part of the first Forest of Hope.
"You can well imagine how thrilled we are that neighbours and expert organisations have so quickly lined up to collaborate, and we hope there will be much more to come."
Jonathan Christie, The Cabrach Trust chief executive, said: "The Cabrach Trust is based at Inverharroch Farm, some four miles upstream from Beldorney, and we are thrilled to form an extension of the Forest of Hope at Inverharroch, strengthening vital riparian habitats in the Upper Deveron Valley.
"As a result, our brand new community wellbeing trails will be complemented by a significant programme of planting encompassing thousands of native, broadleaf trees – a critical development, central to the broader evolution of farming and other activities in the Cabrach and a vital example of how rural communities can contribute to a Just Transition."
Alan McDonnell, programme development manager at Trees For Life, said: "Trees For Life is thrilled to help grow the Forest of Hope by providing tens of thousands of native tree saplings.
"The rich woodland habitat these trees create will help bring back wildlife and restore ecosystems, while sequestering thousands of tonnes of carbon at the same time.
"Climate and nature depend on one another. If we can help nature recover through a combination of tree planting and natural regeneration, we also create hope for the planet's future."
Climate Action hopes to create subsequent Forests of Hope for all future COP meetings.
