Episode 167: Paul Lister on Rewilding Scotland’s Highlands at Alladale Wilderness Reserve
February 6, 2026
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Paul Lister, Founder of European Nature Trust, Owner of Alladale Wilderness Reserve | Photo courtesy of Alladale Wilderness Reserve
Paul Lister, founder of the European Nature Trust and owner of Alladale Wilderness Reserve in Scotland, has spent 20 years restoring 23,000 acres through reforestation, peatland restoration, and deer management. He advocates for reducing meat consumption, addressing population growth, and redirecting wealth toward nature restoration, demonstrating through tourism and immersive experiences that rewilding degraded landscapes is both ecologically necessary and economically viable.
Highlights
- Dual mission: making noise for nature and connecting people to it
- Alladale transformation: 1M+ trees planted, peatlands restored, deer reduced from 2,500 to 500, reintroduction of wildcats and raptors
- European Nature Trust projects across Europe and Belize
- UK biodiversity crisis: only 1% natural landscape remaining
- Meat consumption reduction as key to freeing land for restoration
- Population growth as fundamental sustainability challenge
- Wealth concentration and the need for philanthropic investment in nature
- Successful coexistence examples: Italy’s wolves and bears, Iberian lynx recovery
- Media and storytelling to share rewilding success
- Wellness tourism combining nature and personal restoration
About Alladale
Spanning 23,000 acres of the Sutherland Highlands, Alladale Wilderness Reserve represents one of the most ambitious ecological restoration projects in the United Kingdom. Since 2003, the landscape has transitioned from a traditional sporting estate to a primary site for rewilding and biodiversity recovery.
Reforestation and Land Recovery
The central pillar of restoration at Alladale is the recovery of the Caledonian forest. Between 2009 and 2012 alone, 800,000 native saplings were planted — including Scots pine, birch, rowan, aspen, and juniper — with the total number of trees planted now exceeding one million. These efforts are strategically targeted; for instance, planting alder along riverbanks serves to reduce erosion and provide much-needed shade for wild salmon spawning grounds, where rising water temperatures have historically threatened reproductive success.
Beyond the canopy, the reserve has focused on restoring its peatlands, which serve as critical carbon sinks. These efforts stabilize organic matter and improve raw water quality, essentially turning the landscape into a natural filtration system that mitigates the impacts of heavy rainfall and seasonal shifts.
Extra Credit
- Visit Alladale Wilderness Reserve’s website
- Check out Paul’s European Nature Trust work
Director of Digital Outreach (D.O.D.O.) for The Rewilding Institute
Host and Producer of the Rewilding Earth Podcast
Jack started Rewilding work as Executive Director of Sky Island Alliance in the mid-1990’s, organizing the Sky Island Wildlands Network design, ripping up illegal roads on forest service lands, installing wolf acclimatization pens on Ted Turner’s Ladder Ranch & conducting howling surveys to help make way for the final stage of the Lobo reintroduction program in the Southwest.
Through the years, Jack has worked with Dave Foreman and the Rewilding Gang to further Rewilding initiatives and education.
