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Half-a-million acres of the Scottish Highlands are set to be transformed, by letting nature take over.

The area has been selected for rewilding, a process that allows land and oceans to return to a more natural - or wilder - state.

The huge Affric Highlands initiative is being run by the charity Trees for Life, along with 20 landowners and six organisations.

Work has also begun to involve local communities in the project, which is due to begin in 2023.

The project will last for 30 years in total and will see mountains, hills, glens and forests left to natural processes.

Affric Highlands will stretch from Loch Ness, across the central Highlands to Kintail in the west, and encompass glens Cannich, Affric, Moriston and Shiel.

It is hoped it will boost biodiversity and ecosystems in the area and help in the fight against climate change.

The Scottish project was officially welcomed by the nature charity Rewilding Europe, as the ninth member of its network of large rewilding areas.

Rewilding Europe's eight other areas include Portugal's Greater Coa Valley, the Danube Delta in Ukraine and Croatia's Velebit Mountains.

Trees for Life chief executive, Steve Micklewright said he hoped the project could take rewilding in Scotland to a 'new level' and help them become the 'world's first Rewilding Nation'.

He said: "The Highlands have huge potential to help nature to come back and so help people to thrive, and to make a leading contribution to tackling the global climate and nature emergencies."

What is rewilding?

Put simply, rewilding is all about returning land and oceans to a more natural state.

This often means doing nothing and letting nature take over to create more biodiverse areas.

Often animals or plants are introduced to an area, including species or similar species, that might have lived there previously but do not any more.

Chemicals, fertilisers and worming tablets are not used on the land or animals living there either.

Not-for-profit organisation Rewilding Europe says rewilding is "about letting nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to shape land and sea, repair damaged ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes."

So unlike traditional conservation projects, the aim of rewilding is to create spaces where experts do not need to keep on looking after them and protecting the wildlife there in the future.