Just how inexperienced ARE plans to carpet peat-rich Scots wilderness with generators twice the peak of Big Ben?

In the Highland splendour of Drum Lodge on the Dorback Estate, a tickled-pink Rich Stockdale nestles into an armchair before a magnificent open fire to interview a member of his staff.

The CEO of Oxygen Conservation has every reason to be grinning from ear to ear as he lobs easy questions – their general tenor is ‘why are we so wonderful?’ – at his company’s lawyer, George Pawley. Two days earlier, his firm completed a buy-out of the entire 15,000-acre estate.

He has just broken the news to the locals and is now in the estate’s sumptuous nerve-centre filming a video podcast to tell everyone else.

‘What went especially well here?’ he asks Mr Pawley who dutifully enthuses to his boss about the success of the firm’s twelfth major land acquisition in just three years.

The vast majority of the 45,000 acres snapped up in short order by the company since it formed in 2021 lie in Scotland.

As well as Dorback, it controls the 12,000-acre Invergeldie Estate in Perthshire. There are another 11,366 acres in Langholm Moor in the Scottish and a further 523 acres on the Firth of Tay.

And watch this space in 2025, says Mr Stockdale during the podcast. He is aiming to double the acreage of his company’s landholdings with a single acquisition in the next 12 months.

Who, then, is this most asset-hungry of purchasers bringing ever larger tracts of Scotland’s rural landscape under his purview? 

A tycoon, perhaps, in the mould of Danish clothing billionaire Anders Povlsen, the nation’s largest private landowner?

Not a bit of it. The 41-year-old Hull University graduate is a former employee of the Environment Agency quango from a working-class North Lincolnshire family.

A barbell enthusiast and former American football player, his philosophy since finding himself – at 5ft 7in – by far the smallest member of his team has been: ‘If you want something, run through a wall to go and get it.’

His sartorial style is ultra-casual – and he clearly enjoys showing off the tribal tattoo on his bulging right bicep – yet he means business. 

He aims to turn his firm into a ‘Unicorn Company’ – one valued at more than £1 billion – with Scottish estates central to the business plan.

The clue to his strategy for the huge chunks of rural Scotland he is buying up lies in the company name. 

Mr Stockdale is certainly a conservationist of sorts. And, if you read his LinkedIn profile, also a ‘transformative leader’ and ‘visionary’ thinker on a mission to ‘redefine our relationship’ with the natural world’.

There is much talk of ‘rewilding’, of tree planting, of peat restoration and even of re-introducing lost species.

But the talk among his neighbours around the Invergeldie estate centres largely on the 21-turbine wind farm being scoped out in an upland area of astonishing natural beauty.

The question many here are asking is whether this is what conservation really looks like. Some of the tallest turbines in the land – at 656ft from ground to blade tip, more than twice the height of Big Ben – dotted through their glen?

In the nearby village of Comrie, locals fear they will be an eyesore visible from every decent-sized hilltop for many miles around.

Some even wonder whether this new brand of land-owner – forthright in his views, resolute in re-styling the estate in the image of his environmental ethos – is an improvement on the all-powerful Highland laird of old.

A stinging open letter to Mr Stockdale from one community member accuses him of ‘destroying a free common asset that benefits thousands for your aspirational financial gain, all in order to bankroll your expansionist Unicorn project.’

Ian Thomas, a chartered forester and environmentalist, goes further – taking aim at what he sees as Mr Stockdale’s attempts to contrast his ‘enlightened’ land management approach with those of traditional estates.

‘I’m afraid that I see no contrast between your approach and those of a Victorian landowner,’ he tells the Exeter-based entrepreneur.

‘Arrogance is arrogance whether it comes from someone wearing mustard trousers or someone sporting the latest tattoos.’

That father-of-two Mr Stockdale represents a breed of landowner scarcely seen hitherto around these parts is inarguable.

He styles himself Rich Stockdale PhD and is nothing if not prolific in sharing the benefit of his wisdom acquired through nine years at the Environment Agency, two years at an environmental consultancy and barely three years as the owner of any significant acreage.

He leads a highly enthusiastic team largely comprising bright young things who appear as devoted to him as to his green business mantra of ‘scaling conservation’. 

This he translates in his online glossary of environmental terms as ‘expanding conservation efforts to larger areas to have a bigger impact’ – while making a profit, of course.

His recruitment philosophy – as outlined by Mr Pawley in that podcast filmed in December – is ‘If it’s not “hell yes”, it’s a no.’

And some of the team’s job titles are fascinatingly revealing of the new face of Scottish land ownership. 

There is a ‘Head of Story Telling’, a ‘Terrain Detective’, a ‘Spatial Data Expert’ and a ‘Head of People’ – all of them, apparently, as keen as their boss to hive off rural land for rescuing.

Indeed, Mr Stockdale suggests, they giggle with joy as if they cannot believe their luck as they explore new acquisitions such as Dorback.

It is their methods of re-modelling these landholdings – most obviously on the Invergeldie estate – that raise tough questions.

Such as this one: If Oxygen Conservation is committed to restoring peat lands which act as a natural carbon store, why does the wind farm it proposes partially fall on an area identified by NatureScot as Class 1 peat land – defined as being of the highest conservation value?

And if part of their business model is the ‘greenwashing’ gravy train – selling carbon credits to commercial concerns to offset their emissions – how does this square with potentially releasing carbon by digging up peatlands?

As one environmental commentator tells the Mail: ‘It seems somewhat ironic that [Oxygen Conservation] will profit from selling carbon credits for planting trees, while damaging our single most important carbon sink – active peatlands like blanket bogs, by building a wind farm on them (if they get permission).’

Furthermore, if the firm is so firmly in tune with nature, what about the ‘catastrophic impact’ on moorland birds it is claimed the wind farm will bring about?

‘Your 2,514 acre development proposal will eliminate an established golden eagle territory that has been held in all probability for around 10,000 years,’ Mr Thomas tells the landowner.

‘You are also potentially creating a perpetually set trap to kill young eagles seeking territory, moorland raptors including peregrines and migrating birds.’

He adds: ‘The thought that you will breeze in for a few years and eliminate this pair of eagles for money is horrific.’

Oxygen Conservation is morally opposed to game shooting, which means that such activities cease when it takes over an estate. 

But farming, too, has been drastically scaled back at Invergeldie – until recently there was 2000 sheep grazing here – and there is talk among locals of estate houses lying empty.

And while the firm’s website makes great play of the ‘incredibly hard-working, dedicated shepherd’ who runs the farm, the word around Comrie is none of the original workers on the estate remain in post.

The company did not answer when the Mail asked it directly about estate staff.

‘There is not one employee left working on the estate,’ claims one critic on social media. ‘All the sheep have been sold and the land will be filled with trees and wind turbines! An absolute disgrace that a company like them are allowed to buy up land that has been worked on for hundreds of years.’

Locals report that an Oxygen Conservation recruit who was employed to manage the site resigned on learning, months into the job, that a wind farm was planned. Again, the company did not clarify.

All of which has created a distinct unease around the firm’s latest – and biggest –acquisition, in Cairngorms National Park.

In fairness to Mr Stockdale, it is not through any lack of communication on his part. He repeatedly promotes his ideas on land management through podcasts, newsletters and opinion pieces on his company’s website.

It has a section entitled ‘Criticise Us’ which, helpfully or otherwise, spells out the manner in which it should be criticised – and on which issues.

‘When you’re trying to change the world, even for the better, you’re going to upset a lot of people,’ it explains.

Mr Stockdale met members of the local community in Dorback within hours of the sale completing, told them this was his twelfth such purchase in three years and that transparency was his watchword.

He later wrote of the experience: ‘Working with local communities is hard – we’ve had some horrible experiences and people can be entitled and sadly sometimes aggressive.

‘However, it remains absolutely the right thing to do. At Dorback, it was particularly heartening to find a community that was curious, engaged, and very welcoming.’

A contrasting view of these locals’ predicament is offered by Ian Thomas, watching from Perthshire. He says he is not surprised that estate workers appear ‘on-side’ at this stage.

‘I know from experience how terrifying it is to be in a tied house with a family when it changes hands and you are one of the chattels.

‘The uncertainty is a killer. The other factor is that people working on estates have a very deep attachment to the land that has nothing to do with who owns it, and it is heart-breaking when that link is severed.’

Does a beautiful friendship between landowner and neighbours lie in prospect in Dorback, then, or will relations cool, as they appear to have done for many living close to Invergeldie?

That may largely depend not only on what Oxygen Conservation has planned, but how it presents it. 

For part of the resistance encountered thus far is doubtless the result of a culture clash between full-of-beans young environmentalists and older, local figures, steeped in the land, invested in its welfare, who do not enjoy being patronised.

Some have been irked by Mr Stockdale’s frequent ‘op-eds’ and would prefer less sermonising from a CEO based in the south of England as a community grapples with the prospect of wind turbines arriving next door.

In one, he recalls an angry encounter with grouse and pheasant shooters and concludes their rudeness was driven by ‘fear’ that their ‘time in the limelight’ has passed. 

In the same piece, he praises the Scottish Government for its appreciation of the ‘insights and efforts we’ve dedicated to environmental conservation’.

It is of course, almost certainly the Scottish Government which will decide on the success or failure of the wind farm application expected to be submitted in the coming months by Low Carbon, Oxygen Conservation’s partners in the project.

For all the supposed transparency, questions remain unanswered. Where, for one, is the money coming from to buy a 15,000-acre estate and be eyeing another one three times that size?

It is known that a £20 million loan from green investor Triodos Bank helped secure Invergeldie and Langholm Moor in 2023, but who or what pays for the rest? Profits? In a three-year-old start-up? The company has said little on the subject.

Further, how will giant turbines even be transported to their intended site in Invergeldie? The roads infrastructure does not exist and there are multiple landowners between the nearest main route, the A85, and the site.

Are roads big enough to support wind turbines now to run through the beloved walking and mountain biking spot?

And why, before a planning application has even been submitted, is there word from nearby Crieff that householders have been approached and offered money to cut back overhanging trees in gardens bordering the A85?

The thinking, it seems, is the blades will have to be transported in a vertical position because they are too enormous to go around bends horizontally. Thus overhead foliage must come down.

But does this mean agreement on the wind farm is somehow already in the bag?

That question will surely resonate with dozens of Scottish communities familiar with the feeling of powerlessness that comes from battling to stop wind farms when, by all appearances, the Scottish Government welcome mat is already as good as laid for developers.

Is this a done deal, then, even before the planning application goes in?

For neighbours around the Dorback Estate, there is a measure of reassurance in the knowledge that wind farms are forbidden in a national park – and it seems Oxygen Conservation has no plans to challenge that.

But there is already disquiet about the prospect of the company selling carbon credits through tree-planting. ‘Carbon trading is about sequestering money, not carbon,’ writes one critic of the plan, Vincent Clements of Native Woodland Advice.

He adds: ‘At the moment, the silly money being generated by carbon trading is corrupting not just forestry but the whole land management sector, and making life more difficult for everyone.’

Meanwhile local MSP Fergus Ewing voices concern about the company’s opposition to ‘commercial forestry’ – which means the nation is more reliant on imported timber, bringing with it a huge carbon footprint.

He tells the Mail: ‘As far as carbon credits are concerned, I am sceptical about the model, and unconvinced that it adds value.

‘Having been the MSP for 25 years and Cabinet Secretary for the Rural Economy, I am a staunch supporter of those who work in the countryside and, when speaking to Mr Stockdale, offered my view that they are the real conservationists – those families who have, in many cases for centuries, tended the land, farmed and provided us with food – something we should not take for granted in these days of increased global uncertainty and threats to trade.’

On the question of the Invergeldie wind farm potentially encroaching on peatlands, NatureScot said: ‘We have advised the applicants that they need to assess significant environmental constraints and the issue of peat at [Environmental Impact Assessment] Scoping stage. This should be included as part of their detailed application when it is submitted.’

A detailed list of questions was put to Mr Stockdale through his Head of Story Telling Elly Steers. In response, he offered only a statement.

‘‘Oxygen Conservation is scaling conservation to deliver environmental, social, and economic benefits.

‘Our work isn’t about short-term gain – we have a bold strategy to achieve climate resilience, biodiversity recovery, and a better future for people and wildlife on and around estates across the UK. 

We aim to be as transparent as we can be about everything we do. We will always explore opportunities to integrate renewable energy (whether at a small or larger scale) into our estates to contribute towards national and global decarbonisation goals.’

He added: ‘At Invergeldie, our wind project partners, Low Carbon, are following NatureScot good practice guidelines for ecological assessments and a full environmental impact assessment of the project will be carried out. They are also conducting an extensive public consultation process.’

His outfit’s buy-up of Scotland’s estates remains a work in progress. In time, Oxygen Conservation could be a very much bigger landowner.

Whether it is progress – or something more cynical – will be a matter of fierce debate.