Stories Sustain Us #26 – Community-driven Restoration: Tarras Valley Nature Reserve

Summary
In this conversation, Jenny Barlow shares her journey from growing up in Sunderland, England, to her current role as the reserve manager for Tarras Valley Nature Reserve in Scotland. She discusses her early connection to nature, her education in landscape architecture, and her passion for community engagement in environmental issues, particularly in relation to flooding. Jenny emphasizes the importance of integrating people and nature in land management and highlights the significance of grassroots initiatives in driving change. She also reflects on the historic land buyout in Langholm and the community's deep-rooted connection to the land. Jenny discusses the transformative journey of a community land buyout in Langham, Scotland, highlighting the motivations behind the initiative, the challenges faced, and the importance of community engagement in fostering a sense of ownership and stewardship. The discussion also touches on the role of government in supporting land reform, the four pillars of sustainability guiding their efforts, and the overarching theme of hope for a better future through collective action.

About the Guest
Jenny Barlow, Estate Manager, Tarras Vally Nature Reserve, is part of the team at the Langholm Initiative, who is taking forward the development of the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve following the historic Langholm Moor community buy-out. Jenny helped to oversee the second stage community buy out to bring the final 5,300 acres of land into community ownership and now looks after land-based activities and operations on the reserve, this includes everything from restoring damaged peatlands, preserving ancient woodlands, ecological restoration initiatives and day to day maintenance such as to repairs to tracks and infrastructure.

Show Notes
Website: tarrasvalleynaturereserve.org

Takeaways
Growing up in an industrial town shaped my passion for nature.
Nature and people must be integrated in land management.
Education in landscape architecture emphasizes the human-nature connection.
Flooding disproportionately affects lower socioeconomic communities.
Restoring natural processes can mitigate flood risks.
The community's pride in their land is vital for engagement.
Nature-based solutions require re-education of communities.
Working at a grassroots level allows for greater impact. The land buyout was driven by a need for community regeneration.
Community ownership can restore both economic and ecological health.
Engaging the community is crucial for the success of local initiatives.
Only 3% of land in Scotland is owned by communities, highlighting the significance of this project.
Government support through land reform legislation is essential for community buyouts.
Building trust within the community takes time and effort.
Change can be daunting, but it is necessary for progress.
Hope is a powerful motivator for community action.
Collective action can lead to significant change, even from small beginnings.

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Transcript

Steven 
Hello and welcome to Stories Sustain Us, the podcast where personal stories inspire global change. I'm your host, Steven Schauer, and today we're diving into a remarkable tale of resilience, regeneration, and the power of community. My guest, Jenny Barlow, grew up in an industrial town where her love for nature flourished within the challenges of urban life. That passion set her on a path

become a visionary leader in landscape architecture and grassroots environmental action. In this episode, Jenny shares how integrating people and nature is at the very heart of sustainable land management. From restoring natural processes that mitigate flood risks to spearheading one of Scotland's transformative community land buyouts, Jenny highlights the profound impact of collective action.

Jenny's story illustrates how government support, reform, and hope can create a ripple effect of regeneration, both ecological and economic. We'll also explore the challenges and triumphs of working at a grassroots level, where trust building, community engagement, and the willingness to embrace change are essential ingredients for progress. This is a story of how small beginnings can lead to extraordinary transformations.

guided by four pillars of sustainability. Let me give you some more background about Jenny before we jump into this inspiring episode of Stories Sustain Us. Jenny Barlow is the estate manager at Terrace Valley Nature Reserve, where she is part of the team at the Langholm Initiative, who is taking forward the development of Terrace Valley Nature Reserve following the historic Langholm Moor community buyout.

Jenny helped oversee the second stage of the community buyout to bring the final 5,300 acres of land into community ownership, and now she looks after land-based activities and operations on the reserve. This includes everything from restoring damaged peatlands, preserving ancient woodlands, ecological restoration initiatives, and day-to-day maintenance. Jenny has a background in delivering environmental projects, land management, community development, and sustainability.

She has previously worked on landscape scale nature restoration projects to reduce the impacts of climate change and flooding. She has diverse experience in sustainability roles across public and third sector, including community led design and master planning, engineering with nature projects, low carbon construction and infrastructure schemes. Now, join me as we journey into Jenny's inspiring world of hope.

action and profound connection to both the land and the people who call it home. Let's get started here on Story Sustain Us where we are inspiring action through the power of storytelling.

Steven
Jenny, welcome to Stories Sustain Us. How are you today? Good afternoon for you, good morning for me.

Jenny 
I'm great.

It's lovely to be here. I'll be really looking forward to coming on. So yeah, I'm from, I'm joining in from a very cold Scotland.

Steven 
Yeah, I'm from a very cold Seattle this morning. So

we are both trying to stay warm. well, I've been very excited about this conversation too, ever since I came across your name and the work that you're doing there in Scotland. And, I, I cannot wait to jump in to learning more about it, but first I want to jump in to learning more about you. So.

Jenny 
Yep.

Steven 
What's your story, Jenny? Tell us kind of where are you from and what are some of the highlights of your childhood and your education and career that led you to doing this amazing work that you're now doing.

Jenny 
So

I'm from a town in, well now a city, in the northeast of England called Sunderland. So that's where I've been sort of raised, I grew up. So it's like a industrial town. It was really famous for its coal mines and ship building industry, so quite industrial.

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
So it's funny where I am now because I do see lot of parallels with that kind of history where I am now in Langholm. There's a lot of parallels with that kind of industrial past and also the type of people that live in those sorts of places. I would definitely say that growing up there it really did shape me and I think it's really sort of it attracted me to come and do what I'm doing now really.

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
So

yeah, it was an amazing place to grow up. So I was there till I was 18, always really passionate about the natural environment and always been drawn to that kind, to animals and nature. But I never really, when I moved away from Sunderland at 18, I never really knew what I wanted to do. I was just kind of, I think everyone at that age, you feel a bit forced to make big long life choices.

Steven 
Sure.

Yep, yeah.

Jenny 
There

was a lot of pressure I think to go and decide and go to university and stuff like that. So yeah, I went and studied landscape architecture and then after that started to get much more passionate about communities and community voice and how do the people that live in places have a say over what happens in the environment and how do people, how is it fair, you know, how...

are we fair really and how we try and involve people and have like active community participation and engagement in land and nature and the environment. So I think that's what I started to become a lot more passionate in when I'd worked in sort of various local like public sector and charity. Yeah, yeah, my passion for bringing land, people, nature together.

Steven 
Sure.

Okay.

Jenny 
started when I'd got into work really after university and then I was working in Yorkshire at then just before I came to this job. So I was living in Leeds which is like sort of middle of middle of England kind of thing or Northern depending on where you are in the country. I say it's middle of England but I don't think people that live there would agree. Depends how far north you're from.

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
So I was working at the Environment Agency, so I think that's probably like the equivalent of like EPA in the US and was working a lot with communities that were affected by climate change and flood risk and doing a lot of engagement with landowners and communities who'd been flooded about how you could restore river catchments to help to reduce the effects of climate change. So that was something that was a really, I really started to

Steven 
APA, okay, sure.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Jenny 
I really passionate about getting communities really having a voice and having a say over what happened. And I saw loads of amazing projects that just came out of adversity where people had been affected by awful flooding and horrible things where they'd had everything destroyed. And then they just came together and were like, right, we're doing something. And I found that kind of grassroots, that grassroots action was the thing that I just thought, can't like...

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
even like create that it comes from those sorts of places out of people like innovating out of like adversity and so during that time when I was working there I started to read about this buyout in Scotland where community during the pandemic had started trying to raise funds to buy 10 and a half thousand acres of land from the Dugard Bucklew who's the well I think at the time or maybe around that time he was the sort of

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
first or second biggest landowner in Scotland or has been the largest landowner in Scotland for a very long time anyway and I just thought I'm gonna have to apply for that job. It's like everything I'm passionate about, everything so that's what that's how that led me here really.

Steven 
Yeah.

Ha

Yeah.

Well, let me, there's so much I want to dig into. and, and, I definitely want to dig into your time working on flooding. That's near and dear to my heart. My, most of my professional career has been working in river systems and, and, you know, I have a deep passion for that as well. So, but before I kind of dive into that work, I want to go back in time even further to your, your childhood growing up in Sunderland. being an industrial city, as you described, how did you get

Jenny 
Yeah, go for it!

Yeah.

Steven 
connected to nature, you know, was it on holidays or you know, you know through school or How did that happen to you as you were growing up?

Jenny 
I it wasn't kind of like going out into the countryside as much as like just get the sea was my main contact. you know, that was the main. So it's like along the seaside, so coastal and just going in along the sea into the Rockpool. So it's quite different to the sort of landscape I'm working in now. But I think that was my thing of just like, just being on the beach. And a lot of the time the beach was covered in coal and like there was loads of like

Steven 
Okay, sure, right there on the coast, yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

Jenny 
you know, like industrial, but there was so much wildlife you could find in all the rock pools and like that kind of going down to see the sea when it's crashing off the rocks and big storms and things. That's what I used to love. Love being by the sea. It still calms us now when I'm like quite stressed or whatever I'm like, right, I need time by the sea. Yeah. So I think that was my, yeah, that was my main like, I suppose, access to like nature then.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Nice, okay. Well, yeah, I was wondering how that connection, nice.

Jenny 
and just like the local parks and things. So it wasn't really like the hills I'm living in now by any means. And then after that, it's quite like urban access to nature, but it's still amazing what you can kind of find and where you can go and find solace when you're in a quiet park or a woodland, even in the most urban of areas, you can find it. So it is quite different to living in kind of rural Scotland now, it really is. But yeah, I think it's just that that connection with something wild was the sea for me.

Steven 
Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, and this is my next question I just have to ask because this is more.

I'm a big Premier League follower, and I'm familiar with the Netflix Sunderland Till You Die. I gotta ask, you, given that Sunderland's not in the Premier League any longer, A, do you follow it? And B, I believe if I got the map right, Newcastle's pretty close to Sunderland, and Newcastle's in the Premier League, so is there a big rivalry between Newcastle and Sunderland? I'm a... Yeah.

Jenny 
you

Yeah.

Yes. I think there's a lot of rivalry between the two like over

football and stuff and I think like, or growing up and stuff it would be like, you'd like be insulted if like somebody thought you're from Newcastle or someone from Newcastle thinks you're from Sunderland but you know people think that from elsewhere. But yeah I think I've never really been big on the football but I think the thing that I love about it is the pride that people have.

Steven 
Yeah,

absolutely.

Jenny 
and the absolute

passion that's your roots, that's where you're from and you support your city and the amount of pride and on a match day in Sunderland, I think maybe the football I'm not so into, but what it generates is the thing that I just love, seeing everybody pouring over the bridge, going into the stadium and how it brings people together and stuff and on a match day, the town's just alive.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jenny 
and

you can hear all the shouting and the cry like from the roar from the stands in the stadium and that's what I think the bit that I love is just the fact that it brings people together in such a way you don't not you don't see many things that bring people together like that from like all walks of life which that's what I love about it.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, I've

played growing up here in the States and I've always been a big fan. whenever I'm talking to someone from the UK, I have to ask. whether they're a football fan or not, I just have to ask. yeah.

Jenny 
or it's a big football huge it's so huge here and

I think it does have like its roots in industrial air you know like it does have the roots in those places so I think that's why you know when you go to towns or cities like Sunderland it's like you know areas like that it's got really strong roots and you know in industrial past and yeah it really does so I yeah it's definitely like

Steven 
Sure, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jenny 
It makes me proud to just see how it brings people together.

Steven 
Yeah,

well, I appreciate that perspective on it because, you know, I'm thinking about the match and I really, but, you know, I talked to friends here in the States who aren't familiar, you know, with it and being familiar with American football and then, you know, what I think is real football, what you guys do over there. Yeah, the crowds are just different. mean, people are rabid fans here and very supportive here. part of the joy that I have in just watching a match.

Jenny 
Yeah

you

All right, yeah.

Steven 
is hearing the chants and the singing and just, you know, the jeering of the other players and other fans and just the atmosphere of the stadium like you described that comes through on the television even. And yeah, so.

Jenny 
Yeah.

Bye.

Yeah, it does. And you

see all the faces of all the fans and everybody's just, there's a really famous picture at a Sunderland match where it was taken from like everybody in the stands and everybody's watching a ball go. And it's like, it's one of my favorite pictures because you could just see the whole crowd just like staring and watching, watching this moment. And they're all just like in the moment watching it. And it's one of my favorite pictures. It's so good.

Steven
Yeah.

This is so enthralled,

Yeah.

Yeah. Well,

thank you for my little sidebar into my second passion in life is football. So first passion is sustainability and environment. But yeah. But let's get back at the more important things. Your life is way, way more important. So where did you end up going to university then after you left Sunderland Sheffield? OK.

Jenny 
Ha ha ha.

you have to ask the question.

Sheffield.

Yeah, so Yorkshire. Yeah, and that was a really lovely place to go to uni because it was a city but it's surrounded by hills so you feel, even though you're in a really big city, you do feel like you're in a much smaller place. But yeah, no, it was an amazing place to go and study. So yeah, no, did, really enjoyed, I was there for four years and then moved to Birmingham after that and Coventry.

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
So I went into quite an urban, very, very urban, heist area after that. But still working in environment and communities and landscape.

Steven 
Okay.

Yeah.

and what

did you leave university with? What specifically were you studying?

Jenny 
So I was studying landscape architecture, did undergrad and masters in landscape architecture. and I think the thing that I always like, even though I didn't sort of go away and practice like after uni, didn't, did it for a little while in practice. But I think one of the things that it really helps you to do is that you don't look at the landscape or the environment or the land without people. And I think that happens an awful lot where people look at land or they'll look at the environment.

Steven 
That's right, you mentioned that. Yeah.

Jenny 
and they almost treat it like there's no people there or they don't think about how people are going to feel about it, how they might use it, how are people going to interact with all these plans that you have or how do people have a say. So I think that was something that I came away that probably started that kind of thought of you have to think of all the different interactions and how, I suppose, yeah, so that sort of people-focused approach I think has stood us in good stead since then.

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
you

Steven 
Yeah,

I was actually having a conversation with some colleagues in my paying job yesterday about that very issue. We were driving along a levee system and having a discussion about the restoration of some ag land adjacent to the river and how some people just want the land to be left alone to kind of rewild itself in the discussion around

Jenny 
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Steven 
well, it's not gonna end up like you want it. If you don't have some management of it and envision people interacting with that land, it'll end up with blackberry bushes so thick that you can't use it for anything recreational or enjoyable. so that very idea that you're talking about of people are part of the land, the land are part of people to make sure that we're seeing that interconnection as we.

Jenny 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Steven 
you know, try to.

Jenny 
And I think we've become

like, certainly like, in the last sort of five, maybe 10 years, I do feel like we've just become more and more disconnected as like humanity with land and nature. And we think we're like separate from it. And I think that approach of looking at the land in like aspect and almost looking at it as if we're divorced from it almost is something we really keep doing it. And I'm like, yeah, you almost.

Steven 
Mm-hmm. Right.

Jenny 
you're never going to come up with a sustainable solution if you're always thinking of like, people are over here, nature's over here, we'll do these things and we'll keep them all separate. So I think that's what I'm really passionate about is that you bring, having communities and people, whatever form a community takes, that that's of really embedded in how you look at the land.

Steven 
Right.

Yeah,

yeah, think it has to be that that because whether we believe we're interconnected to the land or not we are so so

Jenny 
and

We are. Like we do. It's

funny, like we have this, like we literally depend on it for our water, air, actual existence, like our life. And we then we look at it really separately as if like, yeah, it's, it's, we definitely, I think there are, I do feel like there's a lot of like movement towards changing that and shifting the focus. I do feel like we're getting there, but maybe not quick enough.

Steven 
Everything. Right. Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, I would agree with that. I,

yeah, hopefully, you know, folks like you and the work you're doing and hopefully some of the things I'm doing and others like us that can help help move that needle. Right. So you so you touch on a I think a really important point, this idea of community engagement as you're working on these projects. And you you mentioned that you really got to.

Jenny 
definitely chipping away definitely

Steven 
a passionate taste for that in your position working on flooding issues and talk a little bit about that. What were some of the projects that you worked on and what were some of the lessons you learned about engaging community? I imagine similar to here, the story I'm telling myself in my mind, the folks that are flooding in your experience are also likely those who are maybe lower down the socioeconomic ladder.

because the way we built those who have more are usually in the better places, a higher ground, the safer ground. you know, we put the, you know, those who maybe have less in places of greater harm, typically, at least that's how the United States has developed. And I'm assuming it's not too different in other, you know, westernized, urbanized areas. So tell me about working with people and.

Jenny 
you

Yeah, I think it definitely impacts

people where, I worked in Doncaster for a little while, so that's South Yorkshire, again, very, very strong mining history there. And a lot of the houses that flooded regularly and communities were most affected by floods were in sort of like...

mining areas and their houses have been put up for people that were working in the mines and like the coal at the time and then obviously now we've got climate change you know with much higher risk of flooding and those communities are sat right in the path of all of that risk so it is it but I think it's just the way that like I think especially England it's very sort of densely

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
populated in a lot of cities now, there's probably been in the past inappropriate development on floodplains. So actually what I found when I was working at the Environment Agency like in Yorkshire was that it actually affected people from across the whole spectrum of like whether you were really wealthy or you were really struggling to pay your bills. And I think that was the thing that almost, but I think how in the aftermath, how they recover.

Steven 
everywhere. Yeah.

Jenny 
is different because they might not have been able to pay for insurance and that's where the economic impact really hits because it's horrendous to the insurance to be paid and everything and try and recover from a massive flood. It's much much harder and you're much more at a disadvantage if you can't pay for all the insurance and all the expensive things to retrofit your home and do all of those things. So I think I learned so much in that job just

Steven 
that resiliency.

Yeah, if you don't have the resources to begin with.

Jenny 
like seeing how it affected people and how, you know, there were certain things where you could make so many big differences with like flood defence schemes. And I think one of the things that I loved working on the most was like, we worked, I helped on a big scheme where the Leeds was really badly affected by flooding, but what the project was doing was actually looking.

right the way upstream and how do you start to restore the catchment and how do you help restore natural processes so that you don't have to keep engineering walls really high, that you don't have to keep like having huge walls through cities. I mean you I think you still do need them but they don't have to be as high and then you have all those other amazing benefits to restore nature at the same time so planting trees, restoring peat wetlands and that's the stuff I really love. I do enjoy the engineering side.

Steven 
Sure. Good.

Jenny 
And I learnt loads from all the engineers and all the project managers I worked with in that job. But I definitely enjoyed the nature restoration side and the ecological restoration side the most. I think that's where my passion really lay. And working with landowners and really passionate people who wanted to make a difference in planting trees. There's a group I worked with for a short time in the Calder Valley.

experienced some awful flooding really regularly but the community like the resilience and the innovation in that valley and like that in Calderdale is just incredible and like they planted thousands and thousands of trees in the catchment they've started to do loads and yeah I heard the other week that they're starting to look at community buyouts so it's just yeah it's really amazing what can come from adversity as well as all the trauma and you know all of the

really horrible emotions. is actually some incredible projects and incredible sort of grassroots initiatives that can come out of those things. So yeah, that's definitely, yeah, I think that's probably what drew me back to working at a more grassroots level where I am now in Langholm. Just because I think that's where my passion really is that like at a grassroots community level, that's where.

I feel like I can make the most impact.

Steven 
Yeah.

Did you find in that work that working with the community and and educating people or bringing awareness to the idea of nature based solutions, you know, kind of restoring the land and the upper part of the catchment and the multi benefits that that can have, including the flood mitigation. Were people receptive to that message or was it something that that

you know, took a fair amount of community engagement to help people see flood control or flood flood management in a new way. and I asked, cause my experience in that it took a considerable amount of, of kind of reeducating people, know, helping them unlearn what they thought a flood project should look like and educate them about what it really could be when you brought nature back into it. And once

once it clicked, once they understood like, we can have nature and flood protection and flood mitigation at the same time, people got it, but it took some effort to educate people or re-educate people about the value of nature. Did you have a similar experience?

Jenny 
We can work together.

I

think it varied so I think you can provide a lot more well it's an illusion of security in some ways when you look at climate risk but when somebody sees and that is an engineer as well or like anybody project manager like within the environment agency or like without out of it in communities there's a lot more like maybe illusion of us like you can provide with them all

Steven 
Sure. Yeah.

Jenny 
You can say, this wall will be designed to this certain height. You can have this level of standard protection. Your insurance will be this. You can almost put the numbers on that and you can say, right, like that's what we're going to do and this is what it will provide. But if you start saying, we're going to restore the catchment. We're not quite sure how long the benefits are going to be, but it'll be amazing and we'll slow the flow, but we're not exactly sure by how much. think that that was one of the things that like me and other colleagues that were working there.

It was the quantifying and people want a number sometimes and sometimes you like, you can't really provide like that, but you know, it's good. And it's like, it was kind of getting over like, how much do we need to quantify this or do we just get on with it? But I think there was a lot of schemes that happened after where like leaky dams had been put in and risk catchments and being restored. And then there were huge floods and then

the benefit of those schemes had been showed by like properties not flooding. And I think that was the evidence that actually, let's just get on with this. So then when I was working there, I think we'd gone past the point of needing public support. think that it was almost like the feeling was why are you not just getting on with this? Well, just get on. So every public meeting I went to, was like, can we do this? So there was a lot more.

Steven 
They already got there. yeah, great. Yeah, yeah, wonderful.

Jenny 
just let's get on. So that's how I experienced it at the time. But I don't think that, I think when people have been flooded, having the assurance of the more sort of like solid, concrete schemes, you know, yeah. And they can be designed really, really well. there's some, I mean, America's got some incredible examples of like nature-based designs and like,

Steven 
That's great. Yeah.

Literally, yeah.

Jenny 
engineering with nature and I think you can do them in such different innovative ways where you can still have nature and like blended with some amazing engineering so there's some incredible examples but I think yeah we just need to be maybe a bit more imaginative sometimes.

Steven 
Yeah, I think we're showing that it can be done.

Yeah. I

found in my past community relations work, you know, people who grew up in a, in an urban environment and didn't really know what a natural river would look like or should look like. And everything you just said, like they, understood what a drainage ditch looked like or what a concrete wall looked like. And they, they wanted that. And when we're, we're explaining to them, well, we're going to give you all these trees and.

Jenny 
No. Yeah.

Steven 
you know, native grasses and, you know, wetlands and everything. We actually had some, you know, people saying, no, they, they, they're actively fighting that because they didn't think it was going to provide the protection. Like you said, or, or frankly, they were worried about having wildlife near their home and, and something that, you know, right. Exactly.

Jenny 
Yeah, so it's just change and like the unknown.

And I think we've like, like across, I think in like the UK, we do have like really, really depleted baselines for nature and like natural systems. And probably a lot of the landscape that we live in here is so, it's been modified so much by like probably millennia, centuries of like, you know, modifications.

Steven 
Sure.

Jenny 
Certainly in the last like say 400 accelerated over the last 100, 200 years we've lost a lot of our like natural systems so when you're trying to say we're trying to restore nature but we don't quite know what it's gonna look like because we actually don't have any baselines and then we have to look at Norway or...

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

Jenny 
other countries on the same latitudes to say well we think it'll probably look like this but we don't know because we've got so so you know the landscapes are really beautiful but they are also like very depleted so i think people like we do have that shifting baseline where you you've really lost touch with what a wild like or a natural system looks like

Steven 
Don't know for sure, right? Yeah.

Jenny 
and how it behaves and that you can't always have control over every single interaction. I do think there's an exciting movement across the whole of the UK to start to look at how can we restore all these natural processes, how can we start to woodlands back into these treeless landscapes, how can we restore all our peatlands and the fact that all of that will have amazing benefits for flood risk and communities downstream.

Steven 
Exactly.

Jenny 
But it does take a whole reimagining of like what we've all got used to and what we've become totally detached from. it is, it's change. And I think like we're all terrified of change and not having control.

Steven 
Change is hard, right? Well,

that is a perfect transition, almost like we planned it, to the work that you're doing now, which is innovative and amazing and is doing all of those things, know, restoring peatlands and forests and wetlands and...

Jenny 
Ha ha ha.

Steven
healthy catchment systems and reimagining sustainable farming and all kinds of amazing things. So let's talk about that. Tell everybody what it is that you're doing, where you're doing it and what it is and let's dive into that work. Because that is exactly what we're here to learn from you about is all this amazing stuff that you're leading there in Scotland.

Jenny 
Hahaha

you

Yes.

So I work as the reserve manager for Tarras Valley Nature Reserve in Langholm. Langholm's in Dumfries and Galloway. So we're in south of Scotland, about 15 miles, 10 miles over the English, past England into Scotland, yeah, over the border. So I...

Steven 
Yeah, we're pretty close to the border. Yeah, yeah.

Jenny 
moved up here to come and work for Langholm Initiative. So Langholm Initiative is a community development trust based in Langholm so it's been running since 1994 and I moved up here for the job three and a half years ago and it's been a roller coaster. It's been such a roller coaster since then. It feels like I've been here a lot longer just because of how much has happened and like what's

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
what we've managed to achieve in the time. It's been a privilege, it really has. So I moved up here after the first buyout. So the community led by the Langholm Initiative took forward a really historic buyout, a land buyout. So it's the first time at this scale that it happened in the south of Scotland. So the Duke of Bucklew put the land up for sale.

10,500 acres went up and it's like a big river valley that kind of wraps around Langholm. So it's really, the land means a lot to people who live here, an awful lot. And there's centuries of traditions and marking of the common boundaries and a very, very sort of deep rooted land rights and land and connection to the land with the people that live here. So it was something that

yet resonated very deeply when I started reading about it to move up here. It's been really amazing to work on it. there was, in 2019 the land went up for sale and then 2021 the Langholm Initiative took forward a buyout. So it started to fundraise and the buyouts were done in two phases. Over that time we've raised

six million pounds to bring that land into community ownership and create like a big nature reserve basically. So one of the aspirations behind the buyout and one of the really big things that drove it was Langholm has like had suffered from like the decline of its traditional industry so was textiles here. There's been a lot of job losses and all of the things that come with those sort of industries that

Steven 
Yeah, when they...

Jenny
that sort of powered

the area for so long and then they went and there was like that loss of like jobs, skills, identity with all of those traditional sort of industries. So when the land came up for sale, there was a lot of people that thought they were worried about the future, who would buy it, what would the incoming landowner do? But there was also that window of opportunity where it was like, right, this is...

that this is going to come around once in a lifetime and we'll not get the opportunity to buy this or bring this into community ownership ever again and that has proved to be a right to being right so a few people at the Langholm Initiative Board and volunteers got together in the beginning and started to look at a buyout and yeah here we are sort of over two four four years we've managed to bring that land into community ownership.

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
So one of the big things behind it was that that land would help to support, be a powerful tool for community regeneration as well as being able to contribute to the climate and nature emergency and do our bit for restoring nature on the doorstep. the primary driver was economic regeneration, benefits for people, but also like large ecosystem restoration. So it kind of brings all those things together.

Steven 
Right.

Yeah,

all those kind of triple bottom line kind of ideas. We've talked about that on the show before.

Jenny 
And yeah, and what's been incredible about

it and I think the thing that's humbled me the most is just the interest and support we've had for like something that is a very locally based kind of locally led project and a locally led land buyout is the interest that's come from around the world, from around the UK, like within the set region, but like so far across the world the story reached and

people were getting in touch during the second buyout and the first buyout, just being like, we're so inspired by this, we're trying to do similar things where we live, we want to do, and it makes you sort of realize that that kind of thing is a lot more sort of.

Hopeful and hope does sort of it's a lot more infectious than a feeling of apathy and I think that's what sort of really caught it was like such a catalyst and we had people Getting in touch all the way through in the messages. We get on our go fund me like everything was just so incredible and So we didn't think we when we first started and I think like we like there was a general feeling of like Let's just see how this goes. Are we going to be able to do this and raise this much money? We didn't have very long

Steven 
Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Jenny 
So the first buyout there was about a six month window to raise the money and then the second buyout we had about a nine month window so it wasn't long to raise six million. And yeah it's a small charity so you know it's only a small number of people and everybody's you know everyone at the time before the paid staff came in were volunteers so it's incredible what can be achieved when people come together behind something and then what that does is

Steven 
So impressive. Yeah, so that's part of the story that grabbed me.

Jenny 
that draws in more and more and more people and then before long it becomes this movement that's like, you know, it does feel, when I look back at it now, it does feel something I feel so privileged to have been a part of. And yeah, and then the hard work starts when the land transfers and it's bought and... Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's almost like when you're working on a camp, like the campaign and the fundraising and everything like that, but...

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, now you got something to do.

Yeah.

Jenny 
Then it's kind of like actually it's a really big change for the people that live here and it's a big change for the Langholm Initiative. It's a big change to have that land go from like one landowner who's had it for hundreds of years to like a much more well like a so it's like a community-led model and that's a really different thing for the south of Scotland.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Jenny 
The Highlands of Scotland and the islands community ownership has been something that's been sort of happening for a lot longer but in the south of Scotland it's quite new so it is forging new ground and I think as we were saying earlier change is scary. You know it is, it's a scary thing, they're like be bridging so much and you know like the change of land use and how the land looks and what we're trying to do with it.

Steven 
Yeah.

Sure, sure.

Jenny 
it looks different. So yeah, there's a lot of change. So one of the really big things that we've been doing since the land transferred and before, and the thing that I've been really passionate about is that we've just been out engaging with people just like all the time and just being really visible and speaking to everybody and just trying to sort of like say, right, look, we can shape this. it's, what do you want to see? What were your priorities? And I don't think,

And I think what's been really nice is that we've actually had some amazing ideas that we hadn't thought of like in the first bit. So there's been loads on like local food production and like growing and like how we graze animals on the land and things like that. So there's been loads of things like that that have come up. Maybe with, I don't know, with global politics and worries about food security. I think those things might be coming out more strongly, but what's amazing is that

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
We have some land there and a community asset there in perpetuity. And what we do with it will hopefully that will benefit all the future generations of the people that live here and come and visit. And so it's just, it's nice to be, suppose the team are almost there to facilitate and help to facilitate all that community engagement as we go forward and get people sort of connecting through the land in lots of different ways. Yeah.

Steven 
Yeah, well there's so much

about this project that grabbed my attention and made me want to reach out to you. That sense of hope that you talked about was certainly part of it as well. as I looked more into what's being accomplished, if I understand it, the vast majority of land in Scotland, like 95 % or more of the land in Scotland is kind of privately held. So even just that first step of

getting the community engagement to raise such a significant amount of money in such a short period of time to have this 10,500 acres set aside in perpetuity for the community. mean, that alone is such a monumental success story. And then,

Jenny 
It's huge. And it went

by in a whirlwind, but it is huge. It's like such a big change and like only 3 % of the land in Scotland is owned by communities. Yeah, 3%. So hopefully we've helped to like shift that little figure at like, you know, might be like, however much it shifted it, but you know, we're helping to, I think what it does is, especially with a project, I mean, the pressure sometimes is huge to be like,

Steven 
Yeah.

That's what it was over and over over and over and and

but it's.

Jenny 
We've got to keep making this a success, but we will. Because I do believe it's grounded on the right things and it's grounded in the right place. But I think it's that thing that like, it can show the impact that communities can have if you're the chance, fair policies, the means to be able to have democratic kind of ownership and management of assets, like land, like land assets, buildings.

Steven 
Sure.

Right.

Jenny 
And I think some of the solutions that we can look at probably we're less bound. You know, we can be a lot more responsive and the things that we can shape can be very, very responsive to local needs. And I think that's the thing that's the biggest opportunity. And then, I don't know, once you start to come into this field and look at who owns land, who has a say, how do people have a say over the land that's around them? Like, who owns it?

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
who's benefiting from it. You realise that there's an awful lot of power bound up in who owns land. I think certainly, in definitely in, well, Scotland and absolutely in England, there's a lot of sort of historic inequality in that. And then that still manifests today in who owns the land and who has power. There's a lot. community having sort of the ownership and the say over that.

Steven 
Very much so, yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah, same here in the states. Yep.

Jenny 
a 10,500 acre piece of land is no small thing. It comes with lot of responsibility, but hopefully we're showing the benefits of what can be achieved when communities own facilities, know we can own buildings, land, but for us, it's land and buildings. It's incredible. It's incredible. And hopefully, I mean, we've benefited a lot with land reform legislation that's been put in in Scotland to...

Steven 
No, it's...

Okay.

Jenny 
to deal with these kind of historic injustices over land. So we've benefited an awful lot. And I think probably without access to some of the things that have been put forward as part of land reform in Scotland, it would have been a lot harder to achieve what we've done. So we'd had access to the Scottish Land Fund, which is a fund that the government make available for communities to buy land. So we accessed two million as part of that funding.

Steven 
Yeah.

It's good to know.

Jenny 
And then we also got access to support for legal fees and stuff like that. So there's an awful lot of things that the government have put in place. yeah, mean, this land reform legislation's being revisited now, but we've certainly benefited from it. So yeah. Yeah.

Steven 
That's great seed money, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a really, thank you for sharing that. I didn't know that part

of the story and I think that's a very important piece demonstrating, know, government and public policies can either hinder these kind of things because they're outdated policies or policies that, you know, are designed to support those that.

Jenny 
Definitely

Steven 
are in power, those who made the policies, you know, historically anyway. But government does have a role to play when they can start to right the wrongs of the past with updated policies. So I didn't know that part of the story and I think that's a really, thank you for sharing that, that's a powerful part of that story, that government does have a part to play in righting the wrongs of the past.

Jenny 
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it's been, it's definitely a policy level and,

and make, you know, supporting buyouts and things. So communities can also register interest in land. So it means they get first refusal on the land as well. So like they can reserve it basically to let them raise funds. So there's a lot of sort of mechanisms that have been put in place that have helped buyouts to happen. there is sort of calls now to, you know,

Steven 
yeah Wow

Yeah.

Jenny 
as with every good policy then you go back revisit and say well we can make it better so that's what's happening now.

Steven 
Sure, sure, or

those who might want to tear it back down to not make it better. The fights go on in public policy, absolutely. You touched on this, but I want to dig a little bit deeper and learn a little bit more from you, because I think it's an important part of the story as well, that the part of the...

Jenny 
yeah, I'm not

Steven 
goal setting, at least as far as I'm understanding from looking into it what it, there's kind of like these three pillars, or four pillars rather, the people, nature, climate, and sustainability, that those four pillars are kind of what is driving the work that you're doing right now. And I really appreciate.

the thoughtfulness that came into identifying those four pillars. It kind of goes back to what we talking about earlier that people have to be part of this, right? People have to be an important part of this process. And then how do you integrate people in with nature and climate issues? And then how do you figure out creative, innovative ways to do all that in a sustainable?

Jenny 
yet.

Steven 
way so future generations can benefit as well. And that seems to be like the very foundation of everything that you're doing there. So tell me bit more about those, did I ascribe it right or, yeah.

Jenny 
So I think one of the, yeah, no, definitely that's

great. Yeah, we like at the start of the buyout, we said, right, well, we want to create a nature reserve. We wanted to have all these community benefits and we want, know, it's climate action. We want to do our bit and it also has to, you know, have sustainability embedded. So I think those kind of four pillars.

helped to provide the parameters and a really clear vision like all the way through. So from like day one, the scopes being fair enough, a lot of detail hadn't been added by that point and we're still adding the detail and working it out now we've got the land, but that helped to provide a really clear like parameter and vision as we went and that sort of was the real push behind the buyout that we could communicate what we wanted to do with the land and that kind of, but then also once we've got the land.

It's helped to keep us in focus, I think, and really keep us grounded in constantly coming back and saying, right, this is what we're here to do. This is what we're trying to do with the land. it is a really good roadmap. And I think what was the biggest thing was that I think a lot, we were saying earlier, I think when we look at like ecological restoration,

Steven 
Yeah, it's your roadmap.

Jenny 
community voice is something that is seen as a tick box exercise and it's just seen as well like they don't really know what they're talking about we'll pilot the experts in and we'll tell them what to do or we'll tell people what or we'll listen to them and then we'll go away and do what we want like we know best

Steven 
Right.

Yeah, you guys do that over there too? That happens

over here all the time.

Jenny 
And I think

that is what gets the apathy, people get disconnected and then you also get like, you get the apathy but then you also get like people just feeling really disempowered. And I think, you know, we definitely don't have like, we're definitely not gonna get it right all the time. Like we're definitely not. But I think that like one of the things that we've been really keen on doing from the start is.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, that's such a wrong way of doing it. Yeah.

Yep.

Jenny 
what are the benefits that people are going to get from this, like what are the economic benefits, how is this land going to benefit the town, how is this land going to benefit people. So I think that's what we're always coming back to. and I think that's that is essential because if people like I mean I think people that live here have a very strong ownership over like the common riding land because they've marked that for 270 years and that is an you know the the the

sense of ownership and connection is so strong, like it's so strong. But I think what we're really wanting to do with the Nature Reserve is that like you encourage that feeling of stewardship and ownership over the whole thing because if you don't have people bought in and supporting and wanting to get involved it won't, it's not going to last as an asset in perpetuity for the community if people aren't bought in and really shaping it from the ground up.

So, when the land transferred over, we've been doing a lot of work on our five-year plan and also what do people want to see from the land. And then our engagement looks so different from like, on what it is and depending on the thing, it'll look different. So think we've been really flexible and responsive to how we speak to people about certain things or if they want to come to us.

And certainly it isn't easy and it definitely isn't like a utopia at all. there is, you know, people don't agree. Like, you know, there'll always be people that don't agree with the buyout and don't think that it should be in community ownership. But I think one of the things that I've had to like, I suppose you always like, you know this, but you've kind of come to the realization that like, you can't win everybody. And like, there'll always be people that don't agree. But that's like...

that's actually okay, that's the nature of democracy. That's okay. if somebody said everyone agrees, I'm not sure they would be telling the truth. know, like on anything, on anything, and change and land and anything to do with land, it brings in politics and you know, there's all kinds of things it brings up. And you know, like I think sometimes with sort of, you know,

Steven 
Right, they have a voice and they have right to use it,

100 % 100 % yeah yeah absolutely yeah

Jenny 
ecosystems and how we see the land. There's a lot of cultural things tied up in how we think the land should look. So there's been, there is a lot, I think we are bridging big changes in terms of who owns the land, how it's going to be managed, what does it look like. Trees are growing in places like that they've never ever grown or like you know there's water pooling in places because we're starting to look at new wetlands, we're starting to look at how do we block

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
drainage ditches to recreate, to restore peatland so the land will look different. that's, yeah, I suppose it's just change. But I think it's, one of the things we have really tried is just always bringing it back to like, supporting local contractors, helping to support local businesses, trying to keep funnelling those economic benefits back to the area, back to the town.

Steven 
Yeah. What's.

Jenny 
so that they're felt locally. And I think that's probably like one of the things. And obviously, you know, people being able to have the means to shape it in the ways that they want and in the ways that suit them. So that's what we've been trying to sort of facilitate in amongst all the finding out about the land, finding out about the species that live here, what ecosystems do we have? How do we restore it? So yeah, no, it's amazing.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jenny 
It's quite overwhelming sometimes but it's amazing at the same time.

Steven 
Well, just like we talked earlier about how there's definitely a shift in our thinking around engineering and how we can work with nature-based solutions and restore things and really do these grand scale ecosystem restoration projects. As you just described, I think there's in my personal experience and in speaking with you and others in this line of work around the world, there seems to be a

Jenny 
you

Steven 
a shifting also in how we engage with the community, which I think is so important as well. It's slowly, but there does seem to be a shift away from that top down, we're the experts, we're just gonna come tell you what it is, like it or not, this is what we're gonna do because we know better than you into this model that you don't know that you're describing of where there's really true community engagement that can.

bring forth some inspired ideas that maybe the experts might have missed, right? Because we don't know those of us who may be an expert in a particular field. We still don't know everything either. So that idea of really engaging community in a meaningful way does.

I think creates some ideas that can be then turned into reality that then feeds a better loop. Whereas before the loop was we tell you what it is like or not and there's a loop of disengagement and disenfranchisement and apathy as you describe. But this new way of doing it where somebody brings an idea forward that resonates and can be done and it's done and implemented and then they see that they're

Jenny 
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Steven 
their feedback mattered and was heard and listened to that then creates more ownership and a sense of, know, right, 100, absolutely that's a great.

Jenny 
It builds trust, think it's like that thing of like, but I think

sometimes like there are things that like, I mean, we've been working very hard to do that, but I think we all recognise that building trust and having that go in two ways, it's going to take a long, long time. And I think that's the thing where people like want to fit community into a box and be like, you'll follow the, we'll follow this really neat pattern. And at the end, everyone will agree and we can go away and just do it. And like,

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
Or at the end it'll go we've hatched all these plans behind closed doors We've better go and speak to people now and you could probably the chances are if you present people with a plan that they've never seen before they're gonna be up they'll probably get their back up and be upset about it because you just look at that and think well I haven't had a say in how that's been created and So yeah, I think there's it's just a different way of looking at it that it's actually

Steven 
Sure, they'll find something wrong with it. Right.

Right, right.

Jenny 
it's so important, it's so important and I think as we're going forward especially when you're thinking about climate crisis like UK most depleted country for nature on the earth like or one of the most you know there's such big challenges that need like everybody so you just kind of think we need everybody to or we really need to start to try and engage people it isn't just something that

you know, the local council can just hatch up behind closed doors and the problem solved, has to come through all. And that empowerment comes through how like, you know, agencies engage with people and how do we speak to people and have conversations? Because I do think people, you know, very quickly know whether their voice is genuinely going to be listened to or not, or are they really going to be heard or not. But I think the community led models, you know, they'll not work everywhere, but I think

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jenny 
And there's a lot of probably capacity building involved for certain places where if you haven't got that set up in your community already, you probably could do, but you might need bit of capacity building to help to bring that together. But it's such a powerful way to be able to meet local needs without people parachuting in and parachute now. I mean, not all the time, but I think mostly, they probably got the chances.

Steven 
Sure. Sure.

lead time. Yeah.

Jenny 
longer-term success because it's rooted within the local area rather than people coming in and So yeah, it's it's definitely something that's an evolving thing. You can't fit it in a box and it's Yeah And humans are messy aren't they so like you can't expect like how we communicate yeah to be nice linear lines because it's just not and yeah Yeah

Steven 
Yeah, which is great. mean, human relationships, human communication is messy. should just, right, let's just recognize what truth is. Yeah, that's not the way anything works. That's not how nature works. And

as we discussed, we're part of nature. So, so let's just acknowledge that.

Jenny 
Yeah and we're messy as well like even though we

like things to be really tidy like we're messy too so it's just yeah and I think that's we we definitely say like like in the team we're happy to just like you've got to be good at working in the mess and just like working through it quite organically sometimes and sometimes you know you have follow much more linear things and things are a lot more black and white if there's something you know statutory or anything like that.

Steven 
Sure, sure. So they...

Jenny 
but how you create things, it's quite nice that it's organic. sometimes people will come onto the reserve and they'll look out on it and they'll be like, well, what's this gonna look like in 15 years? Or how are you gonna manage that corner? And what are you gonna do there? And what's gonna be here? And actually, at this point, we don't really know. We know the principles for restoration and we've got those set out.

Steven 
Yeah.

Right, I have some ideas, but...

Right.

Right.

Jenny 
But I think what we're trying to do is not be as prescriptive and just try and, I suppose, take a bit of a, not a backseat, because we do need to manage the land and we're very aware we need to give it a helping hand. It's had centuries of modification. there is, and you know, the role of grazing animals, kind of thing, dynamism. But we, I think it was something you said earlier about there was a perception when we bought the land, when we said we were going to restore it for nature and.

Steven 
Sure, sure, sure.

Jenny 
Yeah, like ecological restoration that it was just going to be left and that would be it. And it's like, we've we actually have to do it like we have to intervene to be able to. Yeah. And the management will look different to the past, but it's that thing. It still needs to be managed and hopefully we can do that in a way that, you know, really boosts biodiversity and we'll see species coming back that we haven't seen here for a long time. So hopefully we will. Yeah.

Steven 
No, we have to manage it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. Yeah.

Yeah.

I am excited to watch

you do your work from afar and would love to get over there and see it in person sometime. would absolutely love that. I will take you up on that. That's when I reach out, I'm expecting the grant tour.

Jenny 
yes please do visit. Can give you the grand tour.

Steven 
keep talking with you and I love this stuff and I love the work that you're doing but I also want to be respectful of your time and I know we're getting pretty close to an hour in this chat but I want to give you an opportunity to do your call for action what after folks have listened to this or watched it and they're feeling inspired by all the amazing work that you're doing what do you want them to do what how can they support you and help you make donations to can you know to help continue your great work or what do want people

to do in their own neighborhood or you know what's your call to action for folks?

Jenny 
Well, I can go for the Tarras Valley one first. So, Langholm Initiative. Obviously, we are a charity and we are trying to generate sustainable sources of income, but we appreciate any donations if anybody does want to donate to help us restore nature here in Langholm.

If you visit our website, tarisvallienaturereserve.org, that's got a donations page. So any donations are always incredibly appreciated and we'll go to do incredible things for people, nature, planet. And then I suppose just, I don't know on a wider thing, I hope that hearing what we're doing here in Langholm does inspire people to think, you know, what...

what kind of thing can they do on their doorstep as well. You know, was to do what we've done in Langholm started as an idea with like a handful of very like, you know, everyday people that decided to do something and look where we are. So I think it's just never underestimating like the power of what can happen when you come together and you get a few like-minded people that can come together and the change that can be achieved. And I think we definitely need hope right now, don't we?

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
And I think no, like we felt a lot of the time, you know, there's still moments now I'm like, this feels impossible. And then you get there and it's all about like your mindset, but also the people that are involved. So I think definitely just having hope and that nothing's impossible is always the message to take away. Keep chipping away.

Steven 
Yes we do. Yes we do.

Yeah.

I

will put on the show notes page links to the website and links to the donation page and encourage anybody listening to this or watching it that they go contribute and support the amazing work that you're doing there. And you talking about hope is also another great transition, almost like we planned this, but we didn't. I end every episode of Story Sustainers by asking my guests about hope.

Jenny 
are brilliant. Thank you.

You

Steven 
because it is something that you said that I agree with. It's something that we need. And we talk about hard subjects sometimes on these shows, know, the climate catastrophes and the challenges ahead to, you know, move forward together. You know, these are difficult things to talk about sometimes. So hope is a powerful tool in how do we move forward. And really looking at hope in the sense of

Jenny 
there.

Steven 
You have a vision for a better future. You have some sort of loose or maybe specific plan of action to go by. And then you have a sense of agency that you can do something to help get there. It might be hard. You might not make it, but you have a vision. You have some action you can take and you feel you can do something about it. So I want to ask you three questions, Jenny, and then kind of just give me your first

Jenny 
Totally. Yeah.

Steven 
you know, heartfelt response to these questions. So the first question for you about hope is what is your vision for a better future? It can be for you personally or professionally or for the world. Just what do you hope for? What's your vision for a better future?

Jenny 
You know, it's funny, I had to do a quote for him, something I hoped for in a hundred years time actually. So I've actually been thinking about this a lot because I'm being filmed tomorrow. And mine was that, like say in a hundred years time, people look back on us now and say they were the ones that changed everything for the better. And I think that's mine. I want to be part of, and I think, you everybody who's doing work like this and trying to make a change.

Steven 
Yeah.

Jenny 
That's what you're doing it for really, you're doing it so that you are leaving a legacy behind that's better than, know, know, better for somebody, all the future generations. And I think it would not be amazing for people to look back on us now and say, they were the ones that really changed everything and changed the course of humanity for the better. So yeah, that's my answer for that one.

Steven 
nice.

So the second question, I think you may have answered it a little bit, but I want to make sure to give you some space to answer in further detail if you want to. So why is that your vision for a better future?

Jenny 
Yeah.

I think because it takes us beyond ourselves and it takes us to looking at what legacy are we going to leave behind and that it's bigger than us and I think when you come away from looking at it as an individual and you start to look at things as a collective it does make us more sort of community minded it makes us think about the future it makes us think about sustainability and you come be like you you sort of come out

out of a sort of more of an inward looking perspective and I think that is somewhere where we all need to go really if we are going to meet the challenges that we're facing.

Steven 
Wonderful. So the final question, imagine that that future exists now. And we might not be around 100 years from now, but imagine what you just envisioned is actually happening. How does that make you feel?

Jenny 
really really hopeful and yeah I suppose if I think about it I think it just makes me hopeful and also empowered to keep going and just keep going to think about like what could that look like in a hundred years way beyond us but actually what what do we all want to be leaving behind what kind of planet do we want to leave behind and I think that's the thing to to keep going with isn't it and and that yeah something beyond beyond yourself

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Wonderful. Jenny, thank you so much for your time and joining me on this show. I've thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you and I do hope to stay in touch and continue to watch the amazing things that you're doing and absolutely love taking you up on that tour someday. Fingers crossed we'll get there. So I'll...

Jenny 
thank you, it's been great.

Yes, do. Please do come and visit. It's been

a pleasure, thank you.

Steven 
Yeah,

I'll leave you with the last word. there anything else you'd like to say before we head out today?

Jenny 
I think I'm all talked out. It's been great. Thank you.

Steven 
Perfect. Well, thank you, Jenny. I wish you all the best. Okay,

bye bye.

Steven 
And that brings us to the end of another inspiring episode of Stories Sustain Us. I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to Jenny Barlow for sharing her incredible journey with us today. From her roots in Sunderland to her transformative work at Terrace Valley Nature Reserve, Jenny's story is a testament to the power of community, resilience, and hope. Her insights into integrating people and nature in land management

and the impact of grassroots initiatives reminds us that change often begins with small, determined actions. The historic community land buyout in Langholm is a shining example of what's possible when people come together with a shared vision. Jenny's passion for fostering stewardship, her commitment to the Langholm Initiative's Four Pillars of Sustainability, and her unwavering belief in the power of collective action

have left me and I hope all of you inspired. You know, when I first heard about this Langholm Initiative, I was really blown away by it. And the more I looked into it and prepared for this interview with Jenny, the more amazed I am at it. This whole community coming together to buy out this over now 10,000 acres of land and put it into community ownership to restore it and regenerate not only the land,

but turn their economy around, you know, from what used to be an industrial type of economy that is, you know, 19th, 20th century economy, moving forward and looking at how restoring our environment can also restore our economies. It's really a powerful story. And I encourage you to go check it out. The website's here, and I'll put it on the show notes for you to see as well. And...

you know, if you can support them as Jenny asked for. It's do what you can to help this initiative keep going and growing and really leading not only Scotland, but I think the world in some really amazing ways of showing how community can come together and engage in such a powerful, restorative and regenerative way. So with that, I want to thank Jenny once again for showing us that even in the face of challenges,

Hope and collaboration can lead to meaningful and lasting change. And to you the audience, if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends and family and leave me a review and subscribe to Story Sustain Us wherever you get your podcasts. All that stuff that I ask you to do every week, it's really important. So I appreciate all your support. And together, let's continue to amplify stories that inspire action and build a more sustainable future for all.

Next week on Stories Sustain Us, I'll be speaking with an Oregon State University professor who specializes in biochemical oceanography and is the chief scientist at PacWave. Join us on January 28th to be inspired by his innovative work on coastal ocean carbon cycles and capturing sustainable energy from waves. You won't want to miss this engaging conversation. Episode 27 will be available at StoriesSustainus.com.

wherever you listen to podcasts and on YouTube. Again, that's on January 28th. So, until next time, I'm Steven Schauer. Please take care of yourself and each other. Take care.