Who really owns Scottish land? Well, it goes back generations



by mrjohnnymac18

7 comments
  1. What a beautiful accent. I could listen to her read the phone book.

  2. People speak well of Povlsen – his wild land estates are rewilding with a lot of thought and I’ve chatted to some folk on the Gaick estate who speak well of the man. I was up in Aviemore recently and wondered who owned the Loch Ericht estate by Dalwhinnie – turns out it’s some anonymous Panama registered entity…that’s the shite end of this.

  3. The investment firms, e.g. Gresham house is different. They’ve just announced a new fund for example that is a pension fund. Millions of pension funds are linked with Gresham and other investment firms that own land.

  4. Whilst this is not a terrible quick summary, this lady doesn’t know enough about this issue to be presenting on it on social media. The fact she pronounces Gaelic “gay-lick”, the Irish way, rather than “gaa-lick” is a quick fire sign of this. But also, presenting the clearances as a simplistic turfing out of the native population by Anglo Norman lords is a bit misleading – it wasn’t as simple as that. Many of the clearances were perpetrated by Gaelic chief landowners. Also presenting the Highlands as densely populated previously is again misleading – sure it was more populated than it was post clearances, but it was never a densely populated region, as you would expect.

    I also don’t think it’s quite fair to paint the land ownership issue as evil investment houses just looking to suck profits from land, it’s not as simple as that. Yes there should definitely be reform of land ownership in Scotland and particularly the Highlands, more community owned land would be great. But the reality is, a lot of these investment firms and private owners are not just looking at timber production anymore, they are looking at natural forest regeneration, peatland restoration etc, and yes they are looking for a return on investment, but that is now often through nature finance and nature based solutions schemes. The reality is most of the Highlands requires significant natural restoration, and those with the money required to invest in this are often private entities or investors. Government and local community has a significant role to play but by their own admission they need private investment as well. Ideally it would be community ownership focused but that often just doesn’t stack up financially.

  5. Wouldn’t count Anders the same, his estates are being rewilded NOT just for shooting etc, he’s funding wildlife bridges, buying community pubs at a loss to keep open, sponsoring local sports teams, he’s done pretty great compared to misc Russian/Arab/Hidden UK aristocratic ownership.

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