Rural services

The award-winning Be Your Best Self personal development programme for Women in Agriculture is an integral part of the Scottish Government’s vision to make Scottish agriculture a fairer, more inclusive industry, where farm succession is not determined by gender, training is accessible to everyone, and more women take on senior roles in agricultural organisations.

Paths For All have recently launched the Ian Findlay Path Fund which supports the improvement of local paths within and between communities, making it easier for people to choose active travel and public transport for everyday journeys.

The current Programme for Government contains a commitment to establish at least one new National Park in Scotland by Spring 2026. 

Rewilding charity Trees for Life – working on behalf of a partnership that includes government agency Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) and four private landowners – is to apply for a government licence to reintroduce beavers to Glen Affric in the Scottish Highlands, following an extensive community consultation.

The Scottish Government have launched a consultation about how Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) will contribute to the vision of marine environment being clean, healthy, safe, productive, diverse and managed to meet the long term needs of nature and people. 

Specialist advice on animal welfare can help keep your livestock in good health and make your farm practices work for you.

Better Policies for Women in Food Systems

Fostering gender inclusion can have positive impacts on the food systems' triple challenge of ensuring food security and nutrition for a growing population, supporting the livelihoods of millions of people working in the food supply chain, and doing so in an environmentally sustainable way. Yet these positive synergies are often invisible as sex-disaggregated information is not collected.

Scotland’s NHS has become the first national health service in the United Kingdom to stop using an anaesthetic which has a high global warming potential.

Desflurane, used as an anaesthetic during surgery, has a global warming potential 2,500 times greater than carbon dioxide.

The Scottish Rural and Islands Transport Community (SRITC) are seeking to build a community that works together to address the many transport challenges facing rural and islands communities.

14 projects across the UK have been awarded £250,000 by The Prince’s Countryside Fund (PCF) through their “Supporting Rural Communities” grants programme, supporting over 17,000 people in the British countryside.

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