JUBILEE SPECIAL
Should the royals rewild their land?
Green campaigners are urging the Royal Family to help Britain restore nature and tackle climate change by rewilding its vast estates – but some locals are sceptical. Richard Baynes finds out why
There is a unique beauty in the moorland of the eastern Highlands. Great, bare rounded hills swell up, the dark ground brightened by the purple of flowering heather.
Queen Elizabeth II’s Balmoral Estate in Aberdeenshire is at the heart of this landscape, rising up to the craggy 1,155m Lochnagar.
Walking these hills, you smell the essence of our uplands – peat, heather, a hint of charcoal – carried on a brisk south-westerly breeze, clouds sailing by in a wide sky. But if the Wild Card campaign group – backed by celebrity naturalist Chris Packham – has its way, this landscape will change beyond recognition. Caledonian pine and birch will spread high up the hillsides, montane scrub will overtake much of the heather, and bare peat will be covered in vegetation.
The 20,600-hectare Balmoral Estate is the prime target of those trying to persuade the Royal Family to rewild its land. It’s the largest single estate owned by the family, bought by Queen Victoria in 1852. Her husband Prince Albert’s enthusiasm for grouse shooting and deer stalking at Balmoral started a trend, leading to the creation of many more grouse moors. The result was wildlife devastation, with records from the time showing some large estates had hundreds of birds of prey and other predators killed annually to save grouse for the guns. Moors were burned so fresh heather would feed the game birds. A large deer population for stalking also suppressed tree growth, leading to today’s bare hills.
The Royal Family have taken part in the annual grouse shoot at Balmoral since Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s day 
Prince Albert was famed for his deer stalking prowess; 
an aged sign at Balmoral warns of shooting on the moor
Some big estates in the Cairngorms are already rewilding. In Glen Feshie since 2006, Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen has caused a stir by drastically reducing deer numbers to boost woodland growth. On Mar Lodge Estate, a near-neighbour of Balmoral, the National Trust for Scotland has an extensive programme of deer culling, tree planting and natural regeneration.
Rewilding campaigners believe many more will follow if the royals take a lead.
The Wild Card campaign group is adept at garnering publicity for its goals. In October last year, Chris Packham led its members, along with 100 school children, on a march to Buckingham Palace, banners aloft, to hand a petition to palace officials.
Packham – aspokesperson and campaigner for Wild Card, who is also involved in developing strategy – urged the Royal Family to lead by example, declaring: “This is a time for action.
The time for talking is finished. We’re in desperate trouble… They’re in a very powerful position to do something.”
“Rewilding’s benefits include reduced flood risk and carbon sequestration”
Royal land totals around 352,000 hectares – around the size of Essex – and Wild Card co-founder Joel Scott-Halkes says it’s all ripe for rewilding.
Wild Card plans to persuade other big landowners, such as the Church of England and Oxbridge colleges, to rewild, too.
Scott-Halkes says the march to the palace “was absolutely thrilling, with the sense of joyful, cheeky pressurebuilding.” Wild Card invited camera crews and the event made national and international news – no journalist could resist Packham, children, royals and rewilding in one story. But is this high-profile approach the best way to achieve change?
PACE OF CHANGE
Royal landholding broadly breaks into three groups. First, there are the Queen’s big privately owned estates: Balmoral and 8,093-hectare Sandringham in Norfolk.
Secondly, there is the Queen’s Duchy of Lancaster estate, held under special terms to provide her with income, and Prince Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall estate, held in a similar way. Then there is the biggest slice, the Crown Estate and Crown Estate Scotland. This has property in London and other towns and cities, and farms as well as other land. It’s a relic of the times when royal lands had to fund government, and is run as a corporation by the Crown Estate Commissioners. Profits go to the Treasury, with a 25% cut for the Queen.
Scott-Halkes says the Crown Estate is “warmly considering our proposals”, adding: “It looks like they will work towards a rewilding commitment.”
The Crown Estate itself says it “recognises the urgent need to tackle the climate and environmental emergency”, but it makes no mention of Wild Card.
Crown Estate Scotland says it was pleased to hear the views of Wild Card’s members.
But while Scott-Halkes talks of Sandringham becoming a giant version of the 1,396- hectare Knepp Estate in Sussex – former farmland now home to rare birds, thriving woodland, free-range cattle and pigs – he says Buckingham Palace’s response to the petition was a “polite brush-off”.
And the duchies have ignored their approach, he adds. So what else might persuade the royals to rewild?
SPREADING THE WORD
Alastair Driver has worked in conservation for 40 years and is a former head of conservation for the Environment Agency. For the past five years he has been doggedly doing the rounds on behalf of the charity Rewilding Britain, talking to private and corporate landowners interested in rewilding. So far, he has worked with 50 landowners in England and Wales (Scotland has a developed rewilding network so does not need his services).
Only one landowner has rejected a major rewilding scheme. He talks confidently about rewilding’s benefits: reduced flood risk, carbon sequestration, a more resilient landscape and greater biodiversity. And he has a raft of statistics at his fingertips – for instance, how jobs on the rewilded land have grown by 65%, with livestock workers, café staff, tour guides, ecologists and volunteer co-ordinators all hard at work.
In the Pennines, the RSPB reserve at Geltsdale, Ingleborough National Nature Reserve and Kingsdale Head Farm are getting on with rewilding; in the Lake District there are schemes at Ennerdale, Haweswater and the Lowther Estate. Driver has helped them all. Wales is tougher to crack, says Driver, because of a more conservative hill-farming community, but he’s worked with the Gilfach Project in Radnorshire, restoring biodiversity to an old hill farm.
The royal estates have been on Driver’s ‘to do’ list for some time, and he believes the Wild Card campaign could open the door. But the estates’ management would need persuading that rewilding can make economic sense for both the Royal Family and its workforce. “I prefer the diplomatic route,” he says. “I know we need people like Chris Packham to start the conversation, but when it comes to actually getting them to change, you have got to convince them through evidence and experience – real information from real projects.”
BRITAIN’S BIGGEST LANDOWNERS
Britain’s biggest landowner is the Government: the Forestry Commission and the Ministry of Defence own more than 1,214,056 hectares between them. The Crown Estate is next, with more than 242,811 hectares, and the National Trust has a similar amount of land. After that, estimates get more difficult, as landowners buy and sell and private ownership is not transparent.
Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen recently became Scotland’s biggest landowner with around 89,000 hectares, partly because the Duke of Buccleuch reduced his holding to 81,000 hectares or so.
Much of these huge private holdings is low-value upland, but such land is increasing in value as planting trees for carbon credits becomes more profitable.
Other big private landowners include the Duke of Atholl’s Trusts, the Duke of Westminster, and the Church of England, which has 42,500 hectares.
MOVING WITH THE TIMES
The Real Wild Estates Company, set up to promote the investment benefits of rewilding, is another that could persuade the royal household to make the change. Real Wild Estates claims rewilding can be considerably more profitable than conventional farming or sporting business models. Benedict Macdonald, its head of nature restoration, says the range of income streams can include carbon credits – where firms pay for tree planting to offset their carbon output – but also tourism, sales of high-quality meat from animals used for conservation grazing, and angling.
Macdonald says they expect an emerging market in “biodiversity credits” where businesses that have a negative impact on nature can pay for a restoration scheme elsewhere. “This would work for any client, including the Royal Family… so in theory, yes, we could help them, and we are assisting similar landowners,” he says.
That the pressure on the Royal Family to rewild will increase is undoubted. Scott-Halkes believes things could change when Prince Charles takes the throne, saying:
“There is momentum building.”
Driver, too, is looking to the new generation: “If Prince William and his team said to me, ‘We’d like to come and talk to you about rewilding,’ I am very confident that I could enthuse him to have a crack at it.”
But it is likely to take some hardheaded economic arguments, as well as passion, for that change to come about.
Richard Baynes is a multi-media journalist based in Glasgow. He specialises in the environment and the outdoors, including land reform and rewilding. richardbaynes.com
REWILDING: WINNERS AND LOSERS
Rewilding divides opinion, and nowhere more than in the Scottish Highlands. Vast empty estates there stem from the historical, politically driven transformation of traditional leaders – clan chiefs – into feudal landowners, followed by estate sales and the ethnic cleansing of the Highland Clearances.
When new, green-minded owners propose huge changes to land use, it’s seen by many as another disruption by outsiders.
Peter Fraser from Braemar (pictured above) is vice-chairman of the Scottish Gamekeepers’ Association, and opposes rewilding at Balmoral. Driven grouse shooting – which rewilding would end – provides work during shoots, and in maintaining the moors.
“Rewilding estates would mean a lot of jobs going to go, because grouse driving is one of the main sources of income,” says Fraser.
The response of rewilding groups is that nature tourism, deer culling, forestry, natural food production and more would provide more work than existing activities.
Dan Brown (above), who runs a wildlife tourism business at Crathie, near Balmoral, says rewilding Balmoral would be good for his business – but gradual change is needed.
“There’s no reason why deer stalking, grouse shooting and forestry can’t exist alongside rewilding,” he says. “Too much change in one go is no good; we should have evolution rather than revolution.”