Blogs & News
Chairing Nature events at Book Festivals
Chaired by Dr Hannah Rudman, the 2026 Edinburgh International Book Festival is hosting Birds – Evolution and Extinction on Weds 19th Aug (update: sold out by early July!). Every Jurassic Park fan knows dinosaurs eventually evolved into birds, and in The Story of Birds, leading palaeontologist and film adviser Steve Brusatte recounts that thrilling, 150-million-year journey towards the…
Nature Finance into Action
As Co-Chair of the Scottish Forum on Natural Capital, Dr Hannah Rudman co-organised the Nature Finance into Action event, which brought together 150 stakeholders from Scotland’s natural capital community: investors, land managers, policymakers, scientists and project developers, to discuss one key goal: turning nature finance from conversation into action. The March event in Edinburgh sold…
Member of the Board of LLTNPA
The Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands, Mairi Gougeon MSP, today announced the appointment of Susan Davies, Alan Hendry, Amanda McGuigan, Sarah Robinson and Dr Hannah Rudman as Members of the Board of Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority. Dr Hannah Rudman will be appointed for three years from 1 November 2026 to 31 October 2029.
Honorary Fellowship
Hannah has been awarded Honorary Fellowship of University of Edinburgh in the School of Geosciences’ Centre for Sustainable Forests and Landscapes. She is leading the UK Nations and International Co-operation theme in the Integrating Finance and Biodiversity programme with UK CEH funded by UKRI’s NERC, and supporting the EU funded CircHive project.
TNFD Adoption
As of November 2025, the TNFD had 733 early adopters – and Highlands Rewilding is delighted to be a part of this growing global momentum. Announced at COP30 in November, we are one of only two Scottish organisations to be adopters, the other is Aberdeen Group plc, headquartered in Edinburgh! TNFD stands for Taskforce on…
Financing an Environment for Wales
The purpose of Financing an Environment for Wales is to set a collective approach to financing the environment that the country needs. Share insight on actions already being taken, such as the cultivation of nature markets. The theme Hannah leads on the Integrating Finance and Biodiversity programme is a funding partner in the conference, together…
Chairing Nature Repair events at Edinburgh International Book Festival
Hannah is chairing three Nature Repair events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2025. Held in August at venues in the Edinburgh Futures Institute, the Repair theme is explained by Jenny Niven, the festival’s Director: “This year’s key theme of Repair starts from the belief that the brilliant ideas of writers and thinkers can help us…
Trustable AI in Mapping
Hannah’s Trustable AI in Mapping (TAiM) project was funded by over £1m from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency. The project has developed new standards to assess the reliability of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms used in environmental mapping. The consortium of geospatial and environmental data experts issued a joint press release: “From Black Box to Benchmark,…
Horizon Scan Roundtable: Exploring Place-based Approaches to Natural Capital
The Scottish Forum on Natural Capital recently hosted its Horizon Scan Roundtable, bringing together over 50 influential leaders from across the environmental, policy, and land management sectors to explore place-based natural capital approaches in Scotland. This high-level event, which included expert talks, targeted interventions, and dynamic breakout sessions, provided a critical space for discussing how…
Scotland’s Natural Capital Market Framework launches
Mr Tom Arthur MSP this morning launched Scotland’s first Natural Capital Market Framework at the Nature Finance UK 2024 conference in London. As Co-Chair, Hannah was able to chat to the Minister about the support that the Scottish Forum on Natural Capital and its Hubs could offer around the framework’s seven principles and their actions. Hannah’s 2023…
Chairing the Scottish Forum on Natural Capital
Hannah has been appointed co-Chair of the Scottish Forum on Natural Capital. She joined the forum and turned her professional focus and energy to nature positive solutions to the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis in 2020. Hannah has been a co-lead of the Nature Finance Pioneers Hub since its early days, when it was a…
Nature and Community in Perpetuity model
We don’t necessarily need to own land to help scale rewilding. NCIP – nature and community regeneration in perpetuity – is a new model through which Highlands Rewilding, the company where I work as executive director for business development, offers plots of land for sale to buyers who can guarantee the restoration of nature and…
Business models to scale
Highlands Rewilding (HRL) has a bundle of business models common to rural land management for nature restoration, such as regenerative tourism, and regenerative agriculture. Hannah has been helping out on the Executive Team, working with HRL’s experts to create viable new business models which value nature and which will help this nature recovery company scale.…
Taking Scotland’s Rainforest to Davos’ World Biodiversity Forum
As biodiversity hotspots, Scotland’s rainforests are internationally important. The sheer quantity, diversity and rarity of the lichens, mosses and liverworts they are home to is stunning and a joy to experience for experts and non-experts alike. But, like much of the world’s most precious ecosystems, they need our help. Scotland’s rainforest lies in a zone…
Funding boost to address decline of biodiversity
Hannah’s work at the James Hutton Institute, in partnership with the University of Edinburgh, is part of an innovative programme that has won £3 million funding to enable UK companies to integrate nature into financial decision-making and to mobilise investment in biodiversity. The Integrating Finance and Biodiversity (IFB) Programme has already established a network of 250 organisations,…
Developing Highlands Rewilding’s businesses
Highlands Rewilding aims to become one of the most impactful accelerators of nature-based solutions in the world by 2026. Rewilding is a progressive approach to nature conservation that revitalises forest, peatlands and pastures, providing space for wildlife and flora to flourish and communities to thrive. It creates a landscape that boosts biodiversity, carbon sequestration and job creation for guardians of the expanding wildland, all at…
Investing in data for nature-based projects – a case study from Lauriston Farm
My latest video explains why it is useful to invest in data collection to establish baselines, and prove changes through time. The Lauriston Farm team and their investor Federated Hermes Limited discuss how they are collecting data to prove the social, economic and environmental impacts of their regenerative agriculture and community engagement practices. There is a written case…
Decision-grade data on nature
Nature tech is emergent, but with it, improvements and impairments to nature can be measured with an integrity that can be trusted. Local communities of people, many of them resource-constrained, can steward nature together with inexpensive nature tech. With it, they have the capability to (digitally) measure, report and verify (dMRV) how they are preserving,…
What a year…
This year in January, I became Co-Director of the Thriving Natural Capital Challenge Centre and Reader at SRUC, and blogged previously about that. 2022 has been an extremely busy and exciting time. I have now been Principle Investigator on 11 projects, successfully receiving almost £600k grants, including an award from Scottish government for Trustable Credit,…
Co-directing for Thriving Natural Capital
In January 2022, I became the Co-director of The Thriving Natural Capital Challenge Centre at SRUC. Our goal is to research and build ecosystem markets to meet net-zero targets and reverse the biodiversity decline. We support thriving rural communities through regenerative agriculture and conservation. Natural capital can be defined as ‘renewable and non-renewable stocks of natural…