BY BERT BURNETT
A spectre is haunting the Highlands—and it is not the ghost of rebellions past. It is the sleek, corporate spectre of the ‘mega-laird’, armed not with claymores but with spreadsheets, investment portfolios, and a publicly-stated aim to “save the world”. As highlighted in a recent opinion piece by Dr. Josh Doble, these entities—billionaires, asset managers, and firms like Exeter-based Oxygen Conservation—are acquiring vast swathes of Scotland at a staggering pace. They speak of natural capital, restoration, and ecological virtue. But dig a little deeper, and a far less reassuring picture emerges—one that threatens to leave Scotland poorer in community, transparency, and true environmental health.
The model is simple, and seductive on paper: acquire large estates, often with borrowed millions (£25m against one, £18m against another, as noted), then monetise the land through “natural capital products”. Chief among these are carbon credits. Here, the first disquieting question arises: how many times is the same carbon credit sold, and to whom? The system is notoriously opaque, with fears of double-counting and ‘carbon laundering’, where the same tonne of sequestered CO₂ is claimed by multiple parties. When a remote Scottish peatland is sold a carbon saving to a multinational overseas, who is verifying that this saving is real, additional, and not being simultaneously claimed elsewhere? The answer, too often, is no one with real local accountability.
This leads to the second, crucial question: who checks if the “planet-saving” work done on these estates is actually doing so? Organisations like Oxygen Conservation claim they will “allow nature to pay its own note and improve itself”. A noble sentiment. But where is the scientific evidence? Are these estates actually capturing more carbon than before purchase? Where are the baseline figures—the carbon sequestration levels prior to acquisition—compared to the figures after public money has been injected? This is the heart of the scandal-in-waiting.
For let us be clear: the vast capital required for these schemes is not, by and large, being forked out by the new lairds from their own deep pockets. It is public money—government grants, environmental subsidies, and yes, even lottery handouts—that funds the alterations. The taxpayer fronts the cost for fencing, planting, or ‘rewilding’, while the private entity secures the asset, accrues the carbon credits, and prepares its portfolio for a lucrative sale. Oxygen Conservation’s stated aim to assemble 250,000 acres worth £1 billion by 2030 only to “sell the entirety” before moving to the USA reveals the true motive: land is not a home, nor a legacy; it is an investible commodity. The long-term commitment to the ecology or the community is as durable as the next financial quarter.
This is not environmentalism; it is extractivism in green clothing. It is a get-rich scheme that leaves Scotland poorer. Ecologically, the focus on narrow carbon metrics can distort land management, promoting monoculture tree plantations over biodiverse, locally-appropriate habitats. Socially, it is a disaster. These absentee landlords have no stake in the community. As Dr. Doble notes, there is “little evidence for long-term commitment to the local people”. Estates managed for financialised “natural capital” often shed full-time, skilled local jobs in farming, stalking, and estate maintenance, replacing them with scant, seasonal work. Communities are hollowed out, while the profits are siphoned south—or overseas.
We are witnessing the financial enclosure of Scotland’s landscape, a modern Clearance driven not by sheep, but by speculative green finance. The transparency is non-existent, the scrutiny absent, and the local benefit illusory. The mega-lairds may talk of saving the planet, but their deeds suggest a more familiar goal: capital accumulation. Scotland’s land, its people, and its true ecological health deserve better than to be mere lines on a balance sheet, destined to be sold off to the highest bidder when the portfolio is ripe.
It is time for glaring sunlight on these deals. It is time for mandatory, open carbon accounting, robust local consent, and a fundamental question: is our land a common good, or merely a token in a global game of green monopoly? The answer will define Scotland’s future.
Bert Burnett is a retired gamekeeper of more than fifty years’ experience.