After 20 years and 1 million trees, red squirrels return to rewilded Scottish estate

An English businessman who bought a traditional 23,000-acre Scottish hunting estate in 2003 has spent more than two decades changing its heavily grazed landscape, planting one million native trees and successfully bringing red squirrels back to the glens. Paul Lister bought the Alladale estate in Sutherland, about an hour north of Inverness, when it was mainly used for traditional activities such as deer stalking and salmon fishing. Over the past 23 years, the property has been transformed into the Alladale Wilderness Reserve, an eco-tourism retreat and a major ecological restoration project in the Scottish Highlands.When Lister bought the estate, centuries of heavy grazing by large numbers of red deer and sheep had removed much of its native woodland. Only about one per cent of Scotland’s ancient Caledonian Forest remains intact.