TRIBUTES were paid yesterday to Scotland's largest foreign private landowner Paul van Vlissingen, the owner of the 81,000 acre Letterewe Estate who died on Monday.
He will be cremated in his native Holland on Friday. Some of his ashes will be taken back to Ross-shire after they have been released by the Dutch authorities, and some to Africa. The billionaire was leasing land in four African countries to preserve as wildlife parks.
Long before right-to-roam legislation, Mr van Vlissingen introduced the Letterewe Accord, which gave ramblers and mountaineers access to the estate. More recently, he called for the reintroduction of wolves and lynx to control the red deer population in a natural way.
Just last week, it was announced that he and his partner, the writer and filmmaker Professor Caroline Tisdall, were donating GBP100,000 to Sabhal Mor Ostaig, Skye's Gaelic college, bringing their total contribution to GBP250,000.
Speaking from Wiltshire yesterday Professor Tisdall said: "Letterewe will continue in the same tradition with the family and the staff all know that. I will be spending a lot of time there." She said she was looking forward to working with Sabhal Mor on a study into the Gaelic cultural heritage of Letterewe itself.
Mr van Vlissingen, 65, was chairman of SHV, one of the largest privately owned trading companies in the world, employing 65,000 people in 25 countries, including the likes of Calor Gas and Makro superstores.
He announced publicly in April that he had terminal pancreatic cancer and that he would not be taking chemotherapy.
He said then: "In the western world we mistakenly try to keep death at bay. I look to Native Americans instead. When they see their death approaching, they visit good friends and family to share happy memories and look back at the good things. " In June he visited his Letterewe Estate for the last time.
His approach to estate management was praised yesterday by Dave Morris, director of the Ramblers Association of Scotland.
He said: "He had a great influence on land reform in Scotland through the work he did with ourselves and other outdoor bodies in the early 1990s on access. The Letterewe Accord led directly to the setting up of the National Access Forum, which in turn was a big factor in delivering the Scottish access legislation.
"He was a breath of fresh air to the debate over landownership in Scotland. He brought a lot of good ideas from his wider Europe. He was committed to stewardship of the land and dialogue with other interests.
"I remember when we negotiated with Letterewe, he sat at the table with his staff including the stalkers. This was in stark contrast to all those discussions with other estates which were conducted by a solicitor or factor, with the landlord some remote person.
"I also remember a conference with other landlords in Perth in the mid-1990s when he made clear that they would have to change theirways; that they too would have to have a dialogue with outdoor recreation interests."
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