Rewilding
What is rewilding and why do we do it? How to cover this in one short blog? You would need to write a book to even begin to answer that one. Luckily that book has already been written, by many competent authors, including George Monbiot (Feral), Jepson and Blythe (Rewilding – The Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery) and Isabella Tree (Wilding).
But what is rewilding and why does it create so much controversy?
Definitions vary in subtle ways; here are a couple of extracts from rewilding websites:
“Rewilding is a progressive approach to conservation. It’s about letting nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to shape land and sea, repair damaged ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes. Through rewilding, wildlife’s natural rhythms create wilder, more biodiverse habitats.” https://rewildingeurope.com/what-is-rewilding-2/
Nature has the power to heal itself and to heal us, if we let it. That’s what rewilding is all about; restoring ecosystems to the point where nature can take care of itself, and restoring our relationship with the natural world. Reconnecting with what matters.” https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/explore-rewilding/what-is-rewilding
As you can see, there is a lot about stepping back and letting nature take care of itself. Terroir prefers:
“Rewilding, or re-wilding, activities are conservation efforts aimed at restoring and protecting natural processes and wilderness areas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewilding_(conservation_biology)
Practical, realistic and un-romantic.
From Terroir’s experience, most non-ecologists and non-farmers seem to favour rewilding for the emotional pull of recreating what we think was there before, for reintroducing species which we ‘remember’ in folk lore or in our childhoods, but which have gone extinct. But there are always lines to be drawn, usually around wolves and beavers. Many would mourn the loss of the ‘quintessential’ English patchwork landscape (although probably still dependent on fertilisers and pesticides) or heathland, while others want to plant trees over everything.
These are headlines, of course, and we need to dig deeper. Here are some key issues:
Why Rewild?
Emotion: we mourn the loss of hedgerows, wild flowers, song birds. We hope re-wilding will bring back our lost youth, our lost countryside, lost culture and salve our guilty consciences. Cynical? Yes. True? Probably.
Climate change: sadly, you have to dig a lot deeper to find the real elephant in the room (if you'll pardon the expression). It has to be about climate change, the carbon crisis and saving the planet. Biodiverse ecosystems are more stable and resilient, can sequester carbon and are more productive, but not necessarily in a way which will support our current lifestyle.
And there is the rub: rewilding changes how things look and how things work.
Put things back to how they were before we messed up. But:
· when we began to mess up there were rather fewer of ‘us’
· and do we really know how things were?
· so how do we get there from ‘now’, which is a radically different starting place compared with ‘before we messed up’.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, though. But believe you me, it is not just about ‘letting nature take care of itself’.
The piece of rewilding which is best known to Terroir is the Knepp Estate in West Sussex – and we thoroughly recommend Isabella Tree’s book, ‘Wilding’, now also available in paperback. Previously an arable farm on heavy clay which struggled to make ends meet, Knepp is now a gloriously diverse landscape, contributing hugely to a healthy planet – and probably still struggling to make ends meet!!
Knepp’s landscape is not unmanaged. They say it is ‘process led’, in other words natural ecological processes lead the way, but that belies the degree of management required to reach where they think they might be going, on the basis of where they think they have come from.
Following the research of the Dutch ecologist Frans Vera, Knepp is aiming at wood pasture, which many now think was our climax vegetation, rather than the high forest which Terroir’s generation learned about. Wood pasture requires grazers and browsers. Some of those which might once have grazed in West Sussex are now extinct of course, but the herd of old English longhorn cattle, red, roe and fallow deer, and Exmoor ponies are doing a grand job.
Wild boar, which would rootle through the vegetation, opening up soil to the benefit of a wider range of plant species, are expert escapists and a feral nuisance in southern England, so a small number of Tamworth pigs have been employed to do the same job.
But of course, in a natural landscape, there would also be predators, controlling the number of herbivores who are controlling the vegetation. Back to those wolves. But southern Britain isn’t yet ready for wolves. So the ‘carnivore’ is represented by a culling regime.
Letting nature take care of itself? The processes are very close to ‘natural’, but humans are still in control. Every year, management decisions are taken, largely on how many browsers the project can sustain while still achieving wood pasture. Natural famine amongst herbivores has been eliminated.
A natural landscape? Again, very close, particularly as rare, or extinct, locally native species (such as nightingales, turtle doves and purple emperor butterflies) have flocked back into the estate.
Image right: purple emperor butterfly © R Stephens
Not all species can make it back without help, however. White storks, long extinct in Britain, were introduced to Knepp, from Poland, in 2016. They finally felt settled enough to successfully breed in 2020 and are now an established part of the estate.
Is it biodiverse? Very much so.
Do we like it? It’s nothing like what was there before. It’s nothing like that idyllic Sussex agricultural landscape which we think we remember. To many 21st century eyes, it may appear scruffy, untidy and unkempt.
But the number of visitors, thronging the public rights of way on a sunny afternoon, speaks of enthusiastic interest and, yes, approval. The Knepp ‘safaris’ are pretty much booked out for the whole of the summer. The tree platforms are an amazing way to visit the inside of the canopy of a mature oak.
And of course animals do add to the attraction; 21st century eyes do love an antlered fallow deer or a cute Tamworth piglet.