In England's far north, a nature company just bought 7,500 acres of rolling moorland — and it wants to give it all away. The purchase of Emblehope Moor by the restoration company Restore is the centerpiece of a bold plan to turn a cluster of northern English estates into a wild refuge nicknamed "Britain's Yellowstone." The twist? The land won't stay in private hands forever.
Restore paid £8.5 million for the moorland in Northumberland, once used for sheep farming, grouse shooting, and dog training by the Royal Kennel Club. But the company's funding model is unlike most big land deals. It took out a £4.5 million loan from Triodos Bank plus private investment, and now seeks another £4 million to fully fund its 20-year plan. Investors get back twice what they put in, and the bank loan gets repaid. Once those commitments are cleared, Restore will hand the entire 7,500-acre estate to a community trust or charity.
"We want to prove that the bank is paid back, investors get their two-times return but we don't need to become the next for ever laird," said Benedict Macdonald, Restore's founder and director and an environmental writer. "We've got to take the greed out of it for it to work." Macdonald hopes the model becomes the national standard for Britain's uplands — part capitalism, part community care.
The work starts with water. Old agricultural drainage has left large areas of peatland dry and cracked. Restore's first job is to block those drains and restore water levels. Hydrological modeling suggests re-wetting the peat could store an extra 100,000 cubic metres of water — about the same as 40 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Crews will also remove non-native Sitka spruce plantations, which boost artificial predation and crowd out native wildlife.
The moor is already home to merlins, visiting golden eagles, red squirrels, pine martens, and native trout. To help ground-nesting birds like curlews, Restore will bring back native Exmoor ponies, which graze the thick, dry grass that can fuel wildfires and hide food. Over time, the organisers hope black grouse, curlews, and even beavers return to restore natural water flow.
Restore has kept the existing estate workers, who know the land intimately. "The farmer is a real student of the history of grazing here," Macdonald said. "These guys work 18-hour days, they live and breathe the area."
Emblehope sits inside England's largest wild corridor, near the 148,000-acre Kielder Forest)Skip, the 12,000-acre College Valley, and the 4,000-acre Hepple Wilds. Future work will be funded by timber sales, sustainable grazing, government grants, and limited eco-tourism. "We're not the size of Yellowstone, but we're in England's largest wild landscape by a long factor," Macdonald added.