Almond Headwaters

• Three neighbouring hill-farming/shooting estates on the River Almond headwaters, in Perthshire, elevations approx 210m – 930m
• The riparian zone across approx 9,000 hectares; potentially wider catchment action.
• 58,000 (55 yrs) - 74,000 (100 yrs) tCO2e for approx 340 hectares new, low-density woodland.
• New Biodiversity Enhancement and agri-env benefit from woodland created.
• Secondary biodiversity and vegetation enhancement from landscape-scale deer management and montane blanket bog recovery. Possible recovery of access to historical salmon redds.

• Riparian woodland recovery along main watercourse and some tributaries; pasture-woodland recovery in blocks in the glen; small areas of montane scrub recovery; possible salmon redds (the nests that trout and salmon build in the bottom of the river to lay their eggs in).
• Fencing, planting and browsing control (livestock and wild deer); secondary activities possible with deer-management generally across the landscape, thus also facilitating peatland recovery activity on extensive areas of montane blanket bog. Potential new fish-ladder works.
• CreditNature NARIA framework assessment; TrinityAg’s ‘Sandy’ carbon audit dashboard for land management.

• Structured contact is being delivered for the hyper-local community of estate staff and tenants, eventually expanding to organisations in the distant towns and villages.
• Socio-environmental impacts from a relatively minor landscape change are more likely to be job retention/environmental integrity impacts, rather than creation of jobs or of asset/benefit sharing.
• Proof of concept results will determine if the changes can be scaled and rolled out for greater impact.

• The project is delivered with grant from Esmee Fairbairn Foundation to Perth and Kinross Countryside Trust, in a ‘proof of concept’ business model.
• The outputs will be learnings about supporting nature recovery on private land with third party private + public funds, and how much community agency is possible within such transactions.
• Financial and non-financial dividends will be explored. The grant allows preliminary investigative action at zero cash-cost to all project participants.

• Three neighbouring upland estates requested to participate as suppliers, as did two major utility companies and a local distillery as buyers. ‘Community’ was then identified around the geography of the landowners.
• Contracting between suppliers, buyers and community is the subject of the project investigation; we have MoUs from suppliers and buyers to participate in this.
• We believe we can grow the relationships that we have built with stakeholders.

• Disentangling interdependent ecosystem components into discrete commodities that can appear (through MRV) in organisations’ finances, especially their assets/liabilities. This impacts the concept’s credibility in all three stakeholder groups. We need to show how ESG/CSR RoI will drive more credibility than financial RoI.
• Non financial perspectives – estates are culturally deeply invested in hill farming and shooting, often supported by policy.

Many investment readiness development projects are seeking the same learning about proving nature finance concepts; but our context is for a very specific geography, a very specific type of land manager, and a very sparse local community.