‘Carbon is my thing’: the climate geek trying to erase his footprint

Prof David Reay is in for the long haul, attempting to transform his Scottish farm to remove a lifetime's environmental impact

Frogs hopping around his sheep field were a sure sign to Prof David Reay that the land wanted to be boggy. It had been grazed for centuries and keeping a particular area dry had been a constant battle. The frogs were still coming back, as if to say, where's my pond?' So what I want to do as part of this is give them back some of their pond," says Reay, who is creating what he hopes to be a pioneering carbon farm on the Mull of Kintyre, a remote peninsula on the west coast of Scotland.

Reay, a professor of carbon management, bought his farm three years ago. It lies in the village of Glenbarr, on the west side of the peninsula, which is best known for inspiring the Paul McCartney song of the same name. Reay's dream was to buy some land that could enable him to remove his and his wife's lifetime's carbon footprint from the atmosphere.