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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Severin Carrell Scotland editor

FOUND: How community crofting experiment could help repopulate the highlands | Mind Blowing Facts

Tom Cooper, right, development manager for Glengarry Community Woodlands, and Bruce Kocjan, community woodland officer, survey a forest croft site overlooking Loch Garry.
Tom Cooper, right, development manager for Glengarry Community Woodlands, and Bruce Kocjan, community woodland officer, survey a forest croft site overlooking Loch Garry. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

“It’s very exciting,” said Colin Grant, a fifth-generation farmer in Glengarry near Fort William. Grant has seen his community dwindle over the decades but now the village is at the centre of a novel experiment that could help repopulate the Highlands.

Local people in Glengarry are creating woodland crofts in nearby forests – affordable family homes designed for craftspeople, carpenters and small-scale farmers, using a shared ownership model designed to combat the soaring costs of scarce rural homes.

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