GSI Seminar Series: Hope and Community: South Scotland’s biggest community land- buy out

The community of Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway undertook one of south Scotland’s largest community land buyouts which has created a large-scale nature reserve with community regeneration at its heart. When Buccleuch Estates announced in May 2019 it was selling 25,000 acres of Langholm Moor and the Tarras Valley, the local community alongside thousands of people worldwide, rallied together to buy this land – with a vision of developing the vast upland moor, ancient woodland, meadows, peatlands and river valley into the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve.

A huge fundraising campaign attracted £3.8m in just 6 months, including a public crowd funder which raised over £200,000 with thousands of donations from all around the world. The community was able to purchase 5,200 acres of the land. In October 2021, the community started another fundraising campaign successfully raising £2.2m to purchase a further 5,300 acres of land by July 2022, doubling the size of the reserve to 10,500 acres. This is now one of the largest community-led ecological restoration projects in the UK. Jenny Barlow, Estate Manager will be talking about the community buy-out, creating the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve and how this model of democratic land ownership can be a powerful tool for climate action, natures restoration and community regeneration.