Reviving the Wild Heart
Our project partners and volunteers are dedicated to the care and restoration of our natural landscape, enhancing habitats and biodiversity, leaving a living legacy for generations to come.
Led by Borders Forest Trust, Reviving the Wild Heart of Southern Scotland is one of the Destination Tweed partnership projects. It is a landscape scale ecological restoration initiative that will restore a mosaic of natural habitats including native woodland, montane scrub, wetland, hay meadows and ancient woodland.
Reviving the Wild Heart is led by Borders Forest Trust.
Ecological restoration revitalises our landscapes, rebuilding natural habitats and healthy ecosystems to benefit both wildlife and people. Since 1996, Borders Forest Trust has been restoring native woodland habitats in Southern Scotland, an area with one of the lowest percentage of native woodlands in mainland Scotland.
The Reviving the Wild Heart project includes Borders Forest Trust’s sites Talla & Gameshope, and Corehead & Ericstane. Ecological recovery is well under way at the Trust’s Carrifran Wildwood, and as such it is not included in this project. Together these sites cover a combined area of 3,250ha.
Through Destination Tweed, 52,500 trees and shrubs will be planted in the Wild Heart by volunteers to create 80ha of upland native woodland and montane scrub. This project will also provide improved facilities for volunteers, as well as access and interpretation for visitors and the wider community.
Reviving the Wild Heart of Southern Scotland has celebrated another outstanding of progress – surpassing its tree-planting target!
Target: 52,500 trees and 90 volunteer days.
Achieved: 54,722 trees planted across 107 volunteer days.
A remarkable achievement for both the project and the Upper Tweed landscape!
And it doesn’t stop there, Borders Forest Trust are continuing their fantastic work with rural skills workshops, improved access infrastructure, citizen science projects and more.
What our volunteers say:
“The thing I love most of all about volunteering with BFT is that I always come away feeling inspired, and also more hopeful about the potential for reversing the damage we’ve done to our natural world. This is largely down to the dedication and passion of the BFT team (and who wouldn’t feel more inspired in places like Carrifran or Talla, anyway).”
“I find time spent in BFT activities worth-while and rewarding. I appreciate and support BFT’s clear effort to encourage inclusivity and diversity amongst their volunteer community”
“Volunteering with BFT is a really rich and satisfying experience. It’s great to be out with other people in the beautiful countryside and very much feel you can make a positive change.”
Borders Forest Trust
Volunteers, locals, and visitors play a key role in landscape restoration at the Wild Heart through workshops, events, and educational activities such as willow weaving, scything, and hedge laying. Along with school visits and woodland surveys, the project connects people and nature, promoting sustainable land management, healthy ecosystems, and habitat restoration.
Are you interested in volunteering opportunities to help us restore the Wild Heart?
For more information email volunteer@bordersforesttrust.org.
Wild Heart Map
Events
-
Join Borders Forest Trust staff and Kate O’ Leary from Buglife to learn how to ID and survey pollinators using ...
Catchment Area: Upper Tweed,
-
Join Borders Forest Trust and Connecting Threads amongst the hills at Corehead for an intimate, acoustic performance by Jemima Thewes. ...
Catchment Area: Upper Tweed,
-
Join Borders Forest Trust staff and Malcolm Haddow from SWSEIC (South West Scotland Environmental Information Centre) to learn all about ...
Catchment Area: Upper Tweed,
More information at the Borders Forest Trust website.
Borders Forest Trust