Dream Island Home Nightmare

By Dougie Strang, published on 15th June in Bella Caledonia  When you visit a house that you hope to live in, you begin to imagine a future there. You’ll maybe even fall in love with it, convincing yourself that you’ve found ‘home’ and wilfully blinding yourself to its faults and flaws. My wife and I …

Let’s grow a Woodland Nation

A new report published at the end of last month proposes a radical pathway for Scotland to become a Woodland Nation. In the following article, Rob Edwards from The Ferret takes a closer look at what this means. There seems to be consensus that the country needs to dramatically increase the number of trees. However there’s …

Community Landowners and the Climate Emergency

A report commissioned earlier this year by Community Land Scotland reveals the leading role played by community landowners in tackling the Climate Emergency. Community Landowners and the Climate Emergency shows how community landowners are punching above their weight in the fight to save the planet from climate change. It finds their contribution far outweighs the …

Reclaiming our Land book review

A book review of Rob Gibson’s ‘Reclaiming our Land’ *, by Malcolm Kerr. Scotland is recognised as having one of the most concentrated patterns of land ownership in the developed world. Less than 500 individuals own half of our privately-owned rural land, and 750,000 acres of this may be owned by companies registered in offshore …

You can’t forget what you don’t know

Why we need to talk about the links between colonialism and climate change in the context of Highland land reform. Mairi MacFadyen writing in Bella Caledonia 21.04.19 I visited Timespan in Helmsdale recently. The gallery is exhibiting a display called ‘No Colour Bar: Highland Remix: Clearances to Colonialism’ which aims to reconcile the local history …