Northumberland Wildlife Trust chief executive Mike Pratt said the purchase was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to do something meaningful for nature at a large scale through restoring and protecting habitat and increasing access to the countryside.
The estate is home to rare wildlife, including curlew, mountain bumblebees, lapwings, red squirrels, cuckoo and merlin, as well as Atlantic salmon and critically endangered eels, but the conservationists say nature could be richer still.
Their plans include bringing in large herbivores including ponies, hardy cattle and eventually even bison to graze the land naturally, and there are hopes pine martens, beavers and golden eagles could recolonise the landscape.
The trusts also said local people would benefit from greater access to the estate, with potential for creating new paths and developing a visitor and education centre.
Mr Pratt described the Rothbury Estate as sitting in an area which could be a “special area for nature recovery” – the only opportunity of that scale in England.
“It’s got a fantastic and interesting landscape already but when you look in detail a lot of the finer biodiversity, like everywhere else, is not there as it should be,” he said.
“It represents a great canvas to restore nature in that beautiful landscape.”
