Latest grants December 2025

We are delighted to announce the following eleven grants, totalling a disbursement of £171,785 to projects protecting and restoring nature in the Scottish Highlands and Islands.

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Lossiemouth dune restoration

  • Grantee: Lossiemouth Community Council 
  • Grant amount: £15,000 
  • Read more: here

Following a successul pilot in January 2025, Lossiemouth Community Council are expanding their dune restoration efforts. Dunes will be stablised through a range of techniques such as digging in discarded christmas trees and planting marram grass. Community participation is central to the project, with volunteers, schools, and Lossiemouth RAF all getting involved.

Connecting people and twinflower

  • Grantee: Plantlife 
  • Grant amount: £14,698 
  • Read more: here

The beautiful ‘Twinflower’ (Linnaea borealis) is a species in danger of disappearing from Scotland. Plantlife Scotland are leading targeted translocation and habitat enhancement efforts. Connecting volunteers – in the Cairngorms and Easter Ross – with their local Twinflower patches will help develop community stewardship and enable the long-term care of this iconic species.

Seedshed Sutherland

  • Grantee: Kyle of Sutherland Development Trust
  • Grant amount: £10,552
  • Read more: here

Increasing the use of genetically diverse food crops (also known as landrace crops) is a way to increase the resilience of both food production and wider ecosystems.Through identifying and growing landrace crops such as Sutherland Kale, this project will make biodiverse seed available for community growers throughout the Kyle of Sutherland.

MPA film and podcast

  • Grantee: Seaful
  • Grant amount: £14,695
  • Read more: here

This exciting project involves the production of a visually stunning and engaging film to offer essential insight and background to the upcoming Scottish inshore Marine Protected Area consultation. A series of film nights held in Coastal Communities, alongside an online release, will connect people with the consultation and encourage individual responses. This funding will also support further episodes to the successful Our Ocean podcast series, bringing rich conversations on Scottish marine conservation.

West Loch Ness Farm Cluster

  • Grantee: West Loch Ness Farm Cluster
  • Grant amount: £14,906
  • Read more: here

The West Loch Ness Farm cluster centres on eight farms, crofts and estates working in collaboration to put wildlife and biodiversity at the heart of land management. In 2026, HIEF funding will support the cluster’s development of a landscape scale nature restoration project. The cluster also aim to complete the pioneering Great Crested Newt project, as well as carry out more bioacoustic monitoring of bird and bat calls.

West Loch Ness Farm Cluster rewetting work

Geopark educational programmes

  • Grantee: North West Highlands Geopark
  • Grant amount: £15,000
  • Read more: here

The ‘Our Landscapes, Our Futures’ education programme aims to increase the links young people have with the North West Highland landscape they live in. The ‘Hill to Grill’, ‘Junior Rangers’, and ‘Geopark Explorer’s club’ programmes will boost young people’s engagement with the natural environment and help them develop awareness of local environmental career options.

Tackling marine litter on Scottish Islands

  • Grantee: Scottish Islands Federation
  • Grant amount: £20,000
  • Read more: here

For the first time in HIEF’s history, we are proud to award a three-year grant totalling £60,000 to support the Scottish Islands Federation. This funding will provide £20,000 annually, enabling the Federation to continue its vital work tackling marine litter across the Scottish Islands. The grant is unrestricted, offering the Scottish Islands Federation flexibility to assign funds where they are needed most.

Ardura wetland restoration

  • Grantee: Mull and Iona Community Trust
  • Grant amount: £13,534
  • Read more: here

In 2026, Ardura Community Forest will kickstart efforts to restore wetland ecosystems. This was a identified as a key area in the Biodiversity Action Plan, and its importance has been further underscored by the increasing risk of wildfires across Scotland. A forest to bog restoration approach will focus on the enhancement of existing mire (marshland) and the creation of transitional bog woodland habitat.

Collecting native oyster spat

  • Grantee: University of Glasgow
  • Grant amount: £13,400
  • Read more: here

In the face of a bottleneck in the availability of juvenile oysters, the University of Glasgow are designing an alternative supply of native oysters in order to boost restoration efforts by community groups in the Highlands and Islands. This project aims to collect and grow larvae into spat at locations where there is an abundance of native oysters, in order to improve the number of oysters grown on-site.

Orkney Shark & Skate Monitoring 2026

  • Grantee: Orkney Skate Trust
  • Grant amount: £20,000
  • Read more: here

Building on the previous year’s project, Orkney Skate Trust are carrying out further shark and skate monitoring in 2026. Repeat surveys will provide evidence on species presence, behaviour, arrival times, sex, and condition, while dorsal images of flapper skates will support individual identification through the Skate Spotter project.

Munsary Peatland Restoration

  • Grantee: Plantlife
  • Grant amount: £20,000
  • Read more: here

Munsary is a vast undulating plain of peatland in the famous Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland. Centuries of environmental pressures such as historic drainage, erosion, and invasive non-native conifer scrub, have resulted in a severely degraded habitat. This project aims to restore biodiversity, sequester carbon and improve the long-term resilience of this unique landscape.