Highland Carbon Win’s the ‘Best UK Carbon Units Supplier Award’ for Fourth Year in a Row

Rather than merely carbon farming with a few varieties of trees planted on arable farmland, as done by some others, Highland Carbon restores wild landscapes to their former splendour with diverse planting schemes targeted to benefit rare and endangered wildlife. 

Located in the village of Tickhill, Highland Carbon has won the award for ‘Best UK Carbon Unit Supplier’ for each year that it has applied.  This award recognises its exceptional and vast forest creation and wetland restoration initiatives.  It’s work originally focused in the Highlands of Scotland and has expanded to other parts of the nation.

According to its Founder and Managing Director, Richard Clarke, “As an added bonus, we won the ‘2024 Natural Landscape Restoration Award’ on the same day.  This latter award is an acknowledgement of Highland Carbon’s activities, beyond carbon projects, such as: river bank re-wiggling, creation of river overflow areas, dry meadow restoration, wet meadow restoration and bird nesting box installation.”

Highland Carbon’s award-winning Climate Projects in the spectacular wilds of Scotland, Northern England and Wales offer public access and wellbeing opportunities for communities and tourists with rambling, horse riding and mountain biking trails.  They achieve enormous benefits for biodiversity and nature aesthetics.  They mitigate the risk of flooding and enhance drinking water quality.  They also offer amazing opportunities for ecology and climate education for schools, Scout groups and more.

Highland Carbon achieves enormous socio-economic impacts.  To date, the millions of pounds of private finance raised by Highland Carbon has released more than £20m in public funding for nature restoration.  Those funds flow into the green economy and support: forestry businesses, ecology assessors, tree nurseries, fencing subcontractors and earth moving equipment operators.  The projects themselves uplift ecotourism whilst benefiting hotels, restaurants, mountain bike rental businesses and outdoor clothing retailers.  The nature projects themselves count towards the UK’s commitment to the United Nations Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

Highland Carbon is in the process of selling four climate projects presently, with sales contracts in process.  One of these is located at Broughton Hall near Skipton, adjacent to the Yorkshire Dales.  In addition to planting a vast climate forest, this particular estate will be undertaking a wide programme of rewilding including introducing wild ponies, wild boars, heritage cattle and the Eurasian beaver (once their wildlife licence is approved).  The estate is home to a wide range of native wildlife already including otters, trout, deer, red kites, hen harriers, short-eared owls and many more.  It is a major hub for local tourism with many visitors each year.

Richard Clarke is a Board Member of Mind Wellbeing and Trustee of Tickhill Community Connections, both based in Doncaster.  Highland Carbon also supports other local causes such as: DARTs (Doncaster’s Performance Arts Charity), The Sleep Charity, Tickhill Hedgehog Rescue, Windy Ridge Bird Rescue and Nottinghamshire (Bird) Ringers.

In Scotland, Highland Carbon sponsors Highland Outdoor & Wilderness Learning and the Beyond Borders Festival.  Highland Carbon funds discrete initiatives in Scotland including habitat rewilding on the Rothiemurchus Estate in Aviemore, the Edible Forest Garden on the Traquair Estate in the Scottish Borders and Emiel’s Memorial Food Forest on the Talladh-a Bheithe Estate in Highland Perthshire.

In addition to its two nodes of local charity support, Highland Carbon donates to various national charities, most recently including The National Trust, Stand Up to Cancer, Breast Cancer Now and the Macmillan Cancer Charity.

Highland Carbon is currently a finalist for the 2024 ‘Green Business of the Year Award’ with Doncaster Chamber of Commerce, an honour that it had won in 2023 and for which it came second in 2022.  It is also currently shortlisted for the 2024 ‘Environmental Impact Award’ with Sheffield Chamber of Commerce.  Highland Carbon was a finalist for the ‘South Yorkshire Sustainability Award’ in 2023.