Bamff Wildland

Bamff is a rewilding estate in the uplands of North East Perthshire, straddling the Highland Boundary Fault – a landscape of woodland, wetland, pasture and hill covering around 1,300 acres.

The estate is home to one of the most significant rewilding projects in Scotland. In 2002, Bamff launched the UK’s first beaver reintroduction demonstration project, pioneering a model that helped make the case for the species’ eventual legal return to Scotland. Beavers are now well established on the estate, their engineering quietly reshaping the hydrology, creating wetland habitats and driving a cascade of ecological change that continues to unfold.

In 2021, a 414-acre wildland project was established on the southern fields, released from sheep farming and given over to natural regeneration. Herds of Exmoor ponies, Luing cattle and Tamworth pigs now move across this land as ecological proxies for the primitive grazers that once shaped these uplands – grazing, rooting and disturbing ground in ways that support biodiversity and structural complexity in the vegetation.

Sophie Ramsay returned to Bamff in 2018 to lead this next phase of the project, continuing work begun by her parents Paul and Louise in the early 1990s. The Bamff Wildland Project is now guided by a steering committee bringing together scientific and land management expertise to inform its long-term direction. The estate has been in the Ramsay family for centuries, and that continuity of stewardship has made it possible to think and act on ecological timescales.

Bamff welcomes visitors throughout the year – wildlife enthusiasts, researchers and those simply wanting to experience a landscape in the process of becoming wilder. Ecotourism accommodation is available on the estate.