Six little pigs, grunting and squealing, are coaxed from their straw-filled travelling pen out on to the springy moorland. Wet snouts hungrily begin rooting in the bell heather and tufts of wild grass, and trotters churn up the peat bog as if they were spades.

As we watch the first wild boar to roam these Scottish Highlands for four centuries, rain drifts in along the spectacularly deep glen. Ahead is the most northerly copse of Caledonian pines, clinging on from the days before logging and sheep grazing, before man ripped the life out of this valley. It’s a magical spot for an historic moment.

These wild boar are the first of 22 hybrids released in May to work an enclosure for forestry regeneration, the beginnings of Alladale Wilderness Reserve, Scotland’s largest eco-tourism project.

It’s an African-style wildlife safari reserve bringing tourism, jobs and prosperity to this area and where one day we might see the “big five” — wild boar, elk, lynx, bear and wolf. Exact extinction dates for these beasts are not known, but the elk, lynx and bear are thought to have survived here until the Middle Ages, while the wild boar disappeared before the 17th century. Legend has it that the last wolf seen in Scotland was shot in 1743.

Animals roaming again is the dream of Alladale’s new owner, the MFI furniture heir Paul Lister, who hopes to reverse the environmental damage in this 36 sq m wilderness with five glens, ten hill lochs and two river systems. Already, thousands of indigenous trees, including Scots pine and aspen, have been planted, and European elk arrive next February. If the carnivores come back to keep the red deer in check, Alladale could be fat with forest again.

“At the moment I own an environmental desert and slowly and surely we want to turn the clock back. It’s not a safari park, it’s not a zoo. It’s like nothing anyone has ever seen. It’s a mini-Yellowstone,” said 46- year-old Lister, when I met him on my first visit to Alladale last summer. He is committed to putting some of his millions into what he has seen happen with wildlife reintroduction projects in Romania’s Carpathian mountains, North America and the award- winning Shamwari Game Reserve in South Africa, where overgrazed farms have been transformed into a lush game reserve of lions and elephants.

“People might say, ‘what’s he got to gain?’ I don’t have to create this. I’m into preservation of wealth, not making money. We have done a wholesale job of destroying the British Isles. When you see places such as Romania, it gives you encouragement to create a little Utopia right here.”

An hour north of Inverness, on a drive that skirts the Moray Firth, Alladale is deep enough into the Highlands to make you feel blissfully isolated. Mist and rain descend in seconds, chased away by a northern sun that hurts your eyes. In peak summer the Highland midge can be relentless, but autumn is magical, when the silver birch turn yellow, and red berries of the rowan drop on to the first frosts. The guttural cries of stags locking antlers in battle rise from the glen.

I went fly-fishing on the River Carron, where trout play in the peat-stained froth, and to Glencalvie Falls where I watched salmon leap. Down the road is the hamlet of Croick, where, in May 1845, 18 families driven from their land in the Highland Clearances sought refuge in the churchyard and scratched their hopeless messages in the church windowpanes.

Guests stay at Alladale Lodge, a former sporting lodge-turned-luxury retreat, opened last August. Elevated on its own plateau, the 19th-century granite lodge and its eight guest bedrooms have been furnished by Lister’s wife, Pippa, with Laura Ashley prints, leathers and woods. There’s tea and shortbread on tap, fresh water from the bore and bedrooms with flatscreen televisions, goose down pillows and lamb’s-wool blankets. The chef, Drew McKenzie, conjures up fine Scottish home cooking, roasting salmon and trout from the rivers, and home-grown venison. Breakfasts, around a single, polished wood table in the scarlet-walled baronial dining room, feature honey from nearby Ardgay village, Black Isle bacon and tattie scones.

Groups, including families, can take over the whole lodge for a “House Party”, as did Sam O’Brien and her husband from Oxfordshire, who treated a group of pals for Burns Night. “It was like a breath of fresh air. I’m so bored with those country hotels where you eat a large breakfast and then sit and do nothing all day. We walked, saw the deer . . . it’s a different world up there.”

For individuals, there are special-interest breaks from painting, photography and yoga, to deer stalking, mountain biking, ornithology and fly-fishing. There are plans to offer guided hikes over challenging munros that soar over 3,000ft (915m) and by autumn, local resident Rosie Ross will run wildlife safaris on horseback. Well-known ornithologist Roy Dennis will lead wildlife safaris to spot red deer, otter, badger, stoat, ptarmigan, red and black grouse, and red fox. In the skies golden eagle, kestrel, merlin, buzzard and peregrine, even osprey. “We are hoping to increase people’s wildlife experience greatly, perhaps attract people who go, or who have been, to Africa and are now interested in what’s going on on their doorstep,” said Lister.

When I return to Alladale to witness the release of the wild boar, Lister is away in Scandinavia choosing elk. I watch, hypnotised, as the little pigs churn up soil into which a bird might drop a seed that will germinate and grow into an Alladale of long ago. The rain dies and in seconds the glen and its heather glisten.

Need to know

Alladale Wilderness Lodge and Reserve, Ardgay, Sutherland (01863 755338, www.alladale.com), can be booked only on an exclusive-use basis, from £1,900 a night for up to 16 guests. Four-day Wilderness and Wildlife Breaks, run in conjunction with Wilderness Scotland (0131-625 6635, www.wildernessscotland.com), November 1-5, cost £995pp, based on double occupancy, and include full board, four-wheel-drive excursions, mountain biking, fly-fishing, and limited clay-pigeon shooting. Further details: 0845 2255121, www.visitscotland.com.

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