Beavers, ospreys and a sea of kelp: how 20 years of patient work brought Scotland's wildlife roaring back
From Glen Affric's newest beaver kits to the famous ospreys of Loch of the Lowes, a £31m, two-decade conservation push has rewritten the story of Britain's wild places — and Scotland is leading the way
The first sign that something has changed in Glen Affric is a small, dark head cutting a silent V across Loch Beinn a Mheadhoin at dusk.
It belongs to a beaver kit — one of seven animals released into the Highland glen this spring, the first of their kind to swim these waters in four hundred years. A few hundred miles south-east, on a Perthshire pine, a female osprey called Blue 210 is busy "nestorating" with her mate after a 3,000-mile flight from west Africa. And off the Sussex coast, in waters Scotland's marine scientists are watching closely, a kelp forest flattened by decades of trawling is quietly stitching itself back together.
Twenty years ago, none of this looked likely. Today, it is the everyday business of a quietly extraordinary conservation movement — and a new report from The Wildlife Trusts says Scotland has been at the heart of it.
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