The question of who holds the rightful claim to Scotland’s majestic glens, lochs and mountains is almost as old as the country itself, with the debate over land ownership north of the border resulting in much bloodshed over the centuries.

It is a thorny subject for the SNP-led Scottish Government to tackle. But ministers have finally published radical plans aimed at widening the ownership of land across the country, which could result in currently private estates being taken away from landowners and handed to local communities.

Ministers at Holyrood say the proposals contained in the Land Reform Bill will go some way to addressing the inequality of land ownership in Scotland. According to some estimates half of the country’s private land is controlled by just 432 different owners, while the three biggest private landowners hold almost half a million acres between them.

The plans aim to widen the ownership of Scottish land (Getty) (Getty Images)

The proposals have been met with dismay by some of the country’s landowners, notably Viscount Astor, the stepfather of Samantha Cameron, whose family owns the 20,000-acre Tarbert Estate on the island of Jura off Scotland’s west coast. Last month he described the plans as a “Mugabe-style land grab” which would wrest estates away from landowners and leave communities in the Highlands worse off.

The Bill, which has yet to be debated by MSPs at Holyrood, will also end the tax relief enjoyed by the owners of shooting and deerstalking estates, who ceased paying business rates in 1994 after being given an exemption by John Major’s Conservative government. Landowners have claimed re-introducing the tax could make some estates unprofitable and lead to unemployment.

The SNP has suggested that the money raised from scrapping the exemption could be pumped into the Scottish Land Fund, which is used to help support community buyouts of land, increasing its annual budget from £3m to £10m. A Scottish Land Reform Commission will also be established, to recommend further changes to land laws.

Andy Wightman, the land reform campaigner and author of Who Owns Scotland, said the changes were long overdue and could easily be applied across the rest of Britain. “Scotland is a very old nation, but a very unmodern one,” he said.

“We’ve never really settled down as a modern democracy to say ‘Look, we’ve got all this land, how should it be owned and used, how should it be governed, what kind of stake should people have in it?’ Other countries in Europe had that debate 150 or 200 years ago.”

The Duke of Buccleuch, Scotland’s largest private landowner (Getty) (Getty Images)

The reforms follow hot on the heels of another important piece of land legislation passed by Holyrood last week. The Community Empowerment Bill gives local groups powers to take over vacant and derelict plots of land in towns and cities – with some arguing that these changes are actually more significant than the Land Reform Bill.

The second piece of legislation has perhaps gained more attention due to the profile of those who have spoken out in protest. The Duke of Buccleuch, Scotland’s largest private landowner, said the plans filled him with “absolute dismay” and that he intended to reduce the size of his estates in response. “Over the next five or 10 years I think we will reduce our exposure to land,” he added.

Former Scottish Secretary Lord Forsyth has also criticised the reforms, arguing that big sporting estates did the country an “enormous service” by maintaining employment in remote areas and that the status quo “worked well to the advantage of Scotland”.

The Bill has yet to be debated by MSPs at Holyrood (Getty) (Getty Images)

David Johnstone, chairman of Scottish Land & Estates, which represents landowners across Scotland, said the reforms would result in “fundamental and far-reaching” changes to the way that land is managed and owned in Scotland and would not just affect the wealthy.

“Land reform campaigners continually say that too much land is owned by too few people. In reality, this legislation will have an impact on tens of thousands of people across Scotland who own and manage all sorts and sizes of land holdings,” he said.

The group is most concerned about the “right to buy” part of the reforms, which it says will effectively hand ministers in Edinburgh the power to remove property from a landowner if they are judged to be blocking development. It is this proposed change which has prompted accusations of an SNP “land grab”.

Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Show all 15 1 /15 Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Fishing net checking, Vietnam 2014 by Hoang Long Ly Fishermen check their nets in Vietnam. The marine economy is one of the strongest economic sectors of Vietnam; it is targeted to reach 53 to 55 percent of GDP by 2020 and to comprise more than 60 percent of the country’s export turnover Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Glacier 1987, Mount Kenya 2014 by Simon Norfolk Climate change and the melting of Lewis Glacier, Mount Kenya, from a series entitled ‘When I Am Laid in Earth’. The flame line shows the Lewis Glacier's location in 1987. The glacier has receded about 120m. In 1987 the Curling Pond's surface was 15m higher than presently and the back wall was a tall wall of ice, the glacier's snout. The fire is made from petroleum. The photographer insists that his images contain no evidence that the glacier's retreat is due to man-made warming (glaciers can retreat when the don't get sufficient snow, or if the cloud cover thins, for example,) but it is nonetheless my belief that humans burning hydrocarbons are substantially to blame Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Plastic tree #20, Bolivia 2014 by Eduardo Leal Plastic bags are part of the landscape in the Bolivian Altiplano. The accumulation of plastic bags on the environment cause deterioration of the landscapes and agriculture soils and it is associated to the death of domestic and wild animals. The world consumes over one million plastic bags every minute Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Collecting crabs, Satkhira 2014 by Kazi Riasat Alve This man has a huge area of land capable of being farmed productively. A severe cyclonic storm Aila hit the west Bengal coast, west of the Bangladesh border, on 25 May 2009. It caused a storm surge of 2-3m above tide levels along the west Bengal and Bangladesh coasts, with severe devastation to these areas. His land was waterlogged and is no longer cultivable due to the high salinity of soil and water. Now he supports his family by collecting crabs and selling them at the market Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Sandstorm in the city, Kuwait 2011 by Rizalde Cayanan On Friday 25 March 2011 a severe sandstorm very suddenly enveloped parts of Kuwait. It shut down Kuwait's International Airport and the dust storm reduced visibility to less than 500 metres; in some areas, there was reportedly no visibility at all Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Beauty Salon, Lagos, Nigeria 2014 by Petrut Calinescu Two women, dressed in purple and holding hair weaves, stand in the doorway of a hair and beauty salon, one of several such waterside establishments in Makoko, Nigeria. They are usually very busy on Sunday, when the women of the local community are preparing for church Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 The abandoned village of Geamana, Romania 2014 by Glyn Thomas The abandoned village of Geamana in the Apuseni Mountains in Romania - a village that was deliberately abandoned and flooded to form a tailings pond for a vast copper mine.400 families were evacuated and the village flooded to create a tailings pond for the toxic waste from the nearby copper mine at Rosia Poieni. The church tower and a few houses are all that remain, engulfed in contaminated sludge Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Retrace our steps, Fukushima 2014 by Carlos Ayesta and Guillaume Bression Midori Ito is staged in an abandoned supermarket in Namie City inside the Fukushima no go zone. In this area, nothing has changed since the disaster happened. The products stored in the supermarket have passed the date by sell for several years now. Ironically, a sign written in Japanese says « Fresh products ». The photographers asked former residents or inhabitant from the Fukushima region, and in some cases, the actual owners of certain properties, to join them inside the no-go zone and open the doors to these ordinary, but now unfriendly, places. Facing the camera, they were asked to act as normally as possible, as if nothing had happened. The idea behind these almost surreal photographs was to combine the banal and the unusual. The fact of the historical nuclear accident gives these images a real plausibility Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Cladonia Forest, USA 2014 by Matthew Cicanese The anatomy of forest micro-biomes consists of an intricate web of organisms with highly complex relationships, interactions, and elements. This photographic series illuminates the beauty of various micro-biota that reside on the forest floor. Earths biodiversity is being snuffed out by the exponential growth of the human population. It is the photographer’s goal as an environmental documentary artist to photograph these miniscule lifeforms in a way that voices the splendor and magnificence of their existence, and promotes the conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Life in tidal flood 3, Chittagong, Bangladesh 2014 by Jashim Salam A family watching TV, waits for water to recede during a tidal flood in Chittagong. In the past few years, tidal surge – sea levels rising significantly - has begun to affect the city, resulting in frequent flooding of residential and business areas. Considering the present warming trends, the report warns that even 20 to 30 years from now shifting rain patterns could leave some areas of the country underwater. If the sea level rises 65cm in 2080, around 40% of arable land will be lost in southern Bangladesh. It notes about 20 million people in the coastal areas are affected by salinity and will be climate refugees. Chittagong is often regarded as the commercial and industrial capital of Bangladesh. If things continue to worsen, most of Chittagong could become completely submerged in the near future and millions will be climate refugees Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Life in the ship breaking yard, Chittagong 2014 by Yousuf Tushar The ship breaking industry at Sitakunda started its operation in 1960. Due to low labour costs and less stringent environmental regulations Chittagong ship breaking yard boomed in a very short period of time. It has destroyed thousands of trees in the coastal area. It results in constant harmful oily substance leakages from ships, dangerous vapours and fumes from burning materials making this coastal belt a highly polluted area Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Namaj and City, Bangladesh 2015 by Joydeep Mukherjee On the Day of Bishwa Ijtema, that takes place in Tongi near Dhaka, is the world’s third largest Muslim congregation. People from all over Bangladesh and its neighbourhood gather here to offer Namaj for peace and prosperity Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Solar Portrait, Myanmar 2014 by Ruben Salgado Escudero Daw Mu Nan, 45, a Padaung farmer and mother of eight, at her grandson's home in Pa Dan Kho Village, Kayah State. This portrait depicts the lives of inhabitants from remote areas of Myanmar who for the first time have access to electricity through the power of solar energy. Each subject was asked how having electricity has affected their life. The portrait was set up within their environment, according to the sitter's wishers. The scenes have all been lit only by solar powered light bulbs which are contributing to the improvement in these peoples standard of living Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 Berber 2, Turkey 2011 by Hayri Kodal A lone barber shop stands in Konya, Turkey, with its electricity supply still working. Konya is best known as a busy university city, and an economic boom town. But this photograph tells a somewhat different story Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015 The Devil’s gold, Indonesia 2014 by Luca Catalano Gonzaga Inside the womb of the Ijen Kawah volcano, in Eastern Java, Indonesia, the miners go deep in search of the 'Devil's gold', as sulfur has always been known. lpan, 27, a sulfur miner of ten years, looks for sulfur slabs under the toxic fumes

However, the Bill says this would only occur if a local community can convince ministers that removing the property from the landowner was likely to result in “significant benefit” to the public, and was the “only practicable way” of achieving this.

Land Reform Minister Aileen McLeod said the Bill was designed to ensure that the country’s land is “used in the public interest” and could be accessed by future generations for affordable food, housing and energy.

“At the heart of these proposals is the principle of responsibility that comes with all land ownership, and while there are many exemplary landowners in Scotland, the message is clear: it is no longer acceptable to own land in Scotland and not take the public responsibilities that come with that ownership seriously,” she added.

Scotland's landowners

The Duke of Buccleuch

Both the UK and Scotland’s largest private landowner, Richard Scott chairs the family trust-controlled Buccleuch Estates, which owns at least 220,000 acres north of the border. Its holdings include the 17th century Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfries and Galloway, one of Scotland’s finest stately homes.

Anders Holch Povlsen

The Danish billionaire owns 150,000 acres of land in Scotland, including the 24,000-acre Ben Loyal and 18,000-acre Kinloch estates in Sutherland, making him the country’s second largest private landowner. He is the CEO of European fashion company Bestseller, which was founded by his parents in 1975.

Captain Alwyne Farquharson