Trusting People to be Wild – inspiration from Eigg and beyond

LIVESTREAM CANCELLED:

Unfortunately Wi-Fi has conspired against us and so we’ve made the decision to cancel the planned livestream of this event. We are sorry for the disappointment as we know that many of you were looking forward to tonight’s event – but we don’t want to put you through the frustrating exercise of watching a livestream with delays and lags. Instead, we will record the event tonight and will upload the full video of it by Monday afternoon. We will email you once the event is live on our YourTube channel.

Thank you for your understanding.

In 1997, the Scottish Wildlife Trust became a founding member of the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust, one of Scotland’s first community buyouts. Over the last 28 years, this partnership has seen Eigg thrive as a beacon of community empowerment and environmental action.

Scottish Wildlife Chair Kenny Taylor has been part of Eigg’s community ownership story since the start. In his Simon Fraser lecture he will reflect how community led wildlife conservation creates positive futures for people and planet. How nature, culture and community combined can deliver political change in Scotland and beyond.

4th April 2025 marks 28 years since the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust’s offer to buy the island into community ownership was accepted. Kenny will be joined by Eigg’s community, and previous Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust Chair John Hutchison, to share memories of Eigg’s generational change in word and music.

Dr Kenny Taylor FRSA is a well-known figure in the world of conservation as an ecologist, writer, editor, broadcaster and musician. Currently Chair of the Scottish Wildlife Trust, he was previously Chair of the North of Scotland Local Group, and Convenor of the Trust’s Conservation Committee. He was involved when SWT supported the community buy-out of the Isle of Eigg in 1997, as Chair of Trees for Life through the purchase of Dundreggan, and more recently in the campaign to save Coul Links and the establishment of Riverwoods.

A passionate advocate for communities, John Hutchison MBE CEng chaired the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust from 2007 to 2015. Currently Chair of East Lochaber Community Trust and Constitution for Scotland, he has previously chaired West Highland Museum, John Muir Trust, the Scottish Rural Parliament, UHI West Highland College, and was a Director of Community Land Scotland.

Programme:

• Welcome, John Hutchison
• Simon Fraser lecture, Dr Kenny Taylor, Scottish Wildlife Trust
• Panel: Dr Kenny Taylor, Colin Carr, Norah Barnes, Ann Fraser, and John Hutchison
• Toast to the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust by Stuart Fergusson, Chair of Isle of Eigg Residents Association and Maggie Fyffe, Secretary of the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust
• Music

The Simon Fraser Memorial Series is part of Linn an Fhearainn / 100 Years of Community Ownership. The project focuses on the stories of community owners, the change they created, and how their legacy might shape the future by building a new digital archive. The archive can be accessed at www.100years.scot.

The Simon Fraser Memorial Lecture series launched in January 2024, held in Edinburgh, with subsequent events in Gigha, Lewis and Glasgow. These events are dedicated to the memory of Simon Fraser, a solicitor and pioneer of land reform in Scotland. Simon was instrumental in the success of some of the early community buyouts including Eigg, Knoydart and Gigha as well as the Assynt Crofters buyout.

Simon said of the Eigg buyout “It is a triumph for all that is good in humanity and certainly one in the eye for everything that is mean-spirited and self-seeking.”