The ospreys perched upon the crowns of trees in the RSPB's Loch Garten reserve are Scottish wildlife tourism's natural emblems. They may not be as majestic as the golden eagles that wheel high above Scotland's glens, or as large as the sea eagles that patrol its shores, but they make themselves available to the public. Last year some 40,000 visitors came to view them from the Osprey Centre (rspb.org.uk, boatofgarten.com), a handsome pavilion equipped with telescopes, binoculars and interpretive materials.

The project, in the Cairngorms national park, is a textbook example of how a charismatic species can draw people into the diversity of nature. Abernethy forest, which surrounds the Osprey Centre, is an exquisite mosaic of woodland that includes remnants of the Caledonian pine forest, pools and fens, boughs draped evocatively in lichens and trunks around which red squirrels peek. Access is good and the site, a few miles from Aviemore, is easily reached. Even the ospreys' period of residence ties in neatly with the summer tourist season, ending in August when they depart for their African wintering grounds.

It was particularly obliging of them to choose a location so convenient for spotters when they returned to breed in Scotland in the 1950s, after ospreys were exterminated there earlier in the century. Scotland's star species are not always so forgiving.

Wildlife tourism on the north-western fringe of Europe may require time, patience, a philosophical attitude and, in many cases, a boat. The possibilities are rich: as the wealth of options and projects above shows. Nothing is guaranteed, though. There is plenty of space for wildlife to keep out of humans' way and even on these trips, you will feel lucky to see your targets.

Most elusive of all is Scotland's wild cat – which may well be set to disappear for good. In an effort to save it, supporters have defied its resemblance to a domestic tabby and rebranded it the "Highland Tiger".

Scottish wildlife tourism can be seen as part of a larger movement that is exploring new kinds of relationships with nature in Scotland, the one part of Britain with ample reserves of something like wilderness.

Different strands of this movement share a desire to restore something of Scotland's natural past, such as native woodland or the beavers that have been released in a trial project in Argyll. The vision of the Trees for Life charity, based at the new-age eco community of Findhorn on the Moray Firth, is the return of the Caledonian forest that once covered much of the Highlands.

Trees For Life aims to cover 600 square miles west of Inverness with trees – complete with the animals that used to live in the ancient forest, including wild boars, lynx, wolves and even bears. The forest would not be for people's benefit, but exist for its own sake. Their timescale is a couple of centuries or more, the time it takes for a Scots pine to reach maturity.

The Alladale Wilderness Reserve, which opened in 2003, 30 miles north of Inverness, is in rather more of a hurry. Its mission is to restore a remote area of the Highlands to its former natural glory. It has imported a pair of elks to go with its wild boars, and European bison are next on the list. Alladale has even managed to provoke controversy with its plans to fence off a huge area as an enclosure for animals such as wolves.

There is a debate around whether such a scheme, where land is fenced in, can truly be called a wildlife experience. Even in this controlled area, animals such as the elk can be somewhat reclusive, but visitors who stay at Alladale will know that they are at least in the same landscape as the animals – and that, in the long run, may increasingly become the point. Ecologists now argue that isolated reserves are not enough: animals and plants need to be connected by large, resilient networks of habitats in order to flourish. The more that the climate changes, the more necessary these will become. Scotland has more space than the rest of Britain for such networks. And thanks to the Atlantic, its climate is likely to change far less markedly than that of southern Britain, or almost anywhere else in the world.

Whatever happens to the climate, Scottish landscapes are becoming steadily more precious as Britain becomes more and more built up. People may be happy to know that they are sharing a landscape with wildlife even if they can't see it.

Marek Kohn's book, Turned Out Nice: How the British Isles Will Change as the World Heats Up, is published in June