Mount Blair Community Development Trust
“This project has tremendous potential to help respond to one of the most important outcomes of our Community Action Plan, which is to protect and enhance our natural environments and wildlife habitats”
Colin Reed
Bioregioning Tayside
“We recognize the complexity involved in nature restoration and that there are diverse views held about the financialisation of nature. As we embark on this early stage of the project, our goal is to build confidence, foster belief, and generate excitement among our communities about the immense potential this project holds for the benefit of all in eastern Perthshire and Tayside. We are dedicated to ensuring that our actions align with the values and aspirations of our local communities as we work towards a regenerative future.”
Clare Cooper
Blairgowrie & Rattray Development Trust
“Blairgowrie and Rattray have an exceptional local environment that BRDT is keen to protect, and the River Ericht, which flows through the town, is a key element of that. Thanks to work carried out by local groups involved in our Open Spaces initiative, Blairgowrie and Rattray is Scotland’s first biodiversity town, and the Trust is delighted to support this new project which will contribute to ongoing efforts to improve the river quality, the riverbanks and surrounding area.”
Lesley McDonald
The Cateran Ecomuseum
“The Cateran Ecomuseum is delighted to have helped lay the foundations for this initiative through our previous work on the Ericht in 2021 and be supporting the public engagement programme through our River Detectives project”. Bill Taylor
Our project is a community-led landscape-scale nature restoration initiative, with five out of the six of the organisations involved in the current Steering Group representing local communities of interest and place
- the two local Development Trusts, representing the interests of the two main human settlements in the catchment, Kirkmichael and Blairgowrie,
- the Tay Ghillies Association representing the interests of local anglers and Ghillies,
- the Cateran Ecomuseum, the catchment’s principal tourism destination and
- Bioregioning Tayside, a new platform whose aim is to build community resilience in Tayside in response to the climate and biodiversity crises.
None of these organisations own any land in the catchment.
All members of the partnership support the community-led ethos of the project, which mirrors the Scottish Land Commission’s Community Benefits guidance: “For Scotland’s land and people to prosper, communities must benefit from the way land is owned and managed, at the same time as land delivers for nature and climate.”
During our design stage, which ran from July 2023 to July 2024, we also helped to develop the new Community Inclusion Standard that is being developed for nature-based projects.