TWO historic community land buyouts have been agreed in Eskdale and Liddesdale.
The Duke of Buccleuch, Scotland’s second-biggest landowner, has sold land to the communities of Newcastleton and Langholm.
The land hasn’t changed hands in hundreds of years and signals a gradual shift in the pattern of land ownership in southern Scotland.
Caz Graham, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Open Country, meets the people who made these buyouts happen and hears how this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shape the future of their communities.
The Newcastleton and District Community Trust has taken control of 750 acres above the village.
It plans to develop it with new housing, leisure and tourism and renewable energy.
In Langholm a second significant community buyout has just been agreed. The Langholm Initiative are set to own 5,200 acres of moorland, making it the biggest buyout in southern Scotland so far.
They explain their ambitious plans to create a new nature reserve, create new woodland and restore peat to help tackle climate change.
They are passionate about showing that conservation and development can be mutually beneficial and describe how they will deliver ecological restoration alongside the regeneration of their community.
Open Country is on BBC Radio 4 at 3pm next Thursday and is repeated at 6.07am on Saturday, November 21. The presenter is Caz Graham.
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