Landscape Scale Conservation
Rewilding is a brilliant idea, a step beyond the horizon of most conservation projects, why not allow mother nature to take control again? Create, in the words of Rewilding Europe, a situation where you were ‘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.’.
Some large scale rewilding project are under way in the uplands of Britain that that you may be familiar with, from the recently announced ‘Super National Nature Reserve’ in the Ennerdale valley in Cumbria, to the regeneration of the ancient Caledonian forest in the Scottish Highlands. All of them are large in scale and have a holistic approach to ecosystem renewal and repair.
The Problem with ‘Rewilding’
Surprisingly there are quite a few critics of the rewilding movement, although most of their ire seems to be aimed at the definition of ‘rewilding’ itself and its connotations. To be fair, it is indeed a simple term for a complex process that needs to be carried out on a large scale to achieve sustainable results. It requires buy-in from a diverse group of stakeholders; land-owners, farmers, residents, conservations groups, volunteers and local government. If agrement can be found across all of those then real change can happen, rewilding can help to halt species extinction, mitigate climate change and build landscapes that benefit the inhabitants and visitors.
But – exactly what state of wildness do you take a landscape back to? Seventeenth Century? The Middle Ages? Neolithic? Being truly wild would necessitate animals that could roam over large areas with the seasons, a complete food chain (or ‘top-down trophic interaction’ in scientific terms) with apex predators and no intervention from humans. Yet the very process of rewilding involves a huge amount of intervention by us, whether planting trees, excluding certain animals and introducing others. By that definition it is just as much a man-made environment as farmland or dense non-native pine plantations.
Crucially, is there a place for humans in a rewilded landscape? Should the right to roam allow us access in Scotland and rights of way in England & Wales? If it is ever going to be truly wild probably not. Maybe the problem just lies in the name, ‘rewilding’ has a powerfully emotive ring to it, one that captures attention and stimulates the imagination. Certainly it is raising the hackles of several groups of people, from farmers to conservationists. Undeniably, it is a term that has become more fashionable than ‘conservation’, as it galvanises stakeholders and provides a strong hook to hang a project on – the public get it as a concept, even if they couldn’t tell a vegetation succession from a top-down trophic interaction
Trees For Life and the Caledonian Forest
A good example of a large scale rewilding project is Trees For Life, a Scottish initiative that is seeking to do nothing less that ‘rewild the Scottish Highlands’. Their current remit is to reintroduce lynx, beavers and red squirrels to build a sustainability coalition of landowners in the Affric Highlands and rebuild the Caledonian pine forest in the Highlands.
The Caledonian forest in Scotland is an incredibly ancient environment, although much smaller than it once was, the trees that exist today have an unbroken 9,000 year continuum of natural evolution. The trees first appeared after the last glacial period, over 7,000 years ago. It survived a climate that became progressively wetter and the depradations upon it caused by humans domesticating grazing animals.
George Monbiot estimates that in the UK
some 4m hectares of hill and mountain are used for sheep farming. Almost all this land, much of which would otherwise support temperate rainforest, is treeless, as tree seedlings are highly nutritious and selectively eaten by sheep. There are more trees for each hectare in some parts of inner London than there are in the “wild” British hills where sheep graze.
A unique ecosystem of animals and vegetation grew up in the soils of Scotland, strong and adaptable. Down through the ages the forest has shrunk to a scattering of sites across the highlands, many of them on land that was either to steep or impoverished to cultivate or be grazed.
Trees For Life is one of the most visionary and wide ranging rewilding projects I have seen, they acknowledge the human involvement in enabling and cultivating such an environment. Who cares about the pedantic interpretations of what the definition of ‘rewilding’ is?
We’ve F@#ked the Planet
When you drill down into the details of objections to the idea of rewilding, the biggest gripe seems to be the very notion of handing the reins back to nature. That viewpoint comes both from parts of the scientific community and from a, frankly, capitalist viewpoint. Rewilding has a subtext, it acknowledges that the human domain may not be in a state of constant growth for evermore. Then there is the argument that it is arrogant to even think that we (humans) can ‘save’ the planet, nature will have the upper hand, the climate is changing and will continue to whilst we faff about.
Personally I feel that these rewilding projects are all about highly motivated people trying to un-fuck the environment. Every generation has a different relationship with the natural world, and every generations trailblazers have their critics. It’s easy to pick holes and criticise, less so to stand up and go out on a limb to attempt to achieve something. However we need to acept that the more land that is rewilded means less land for growing crops or raising animals, which then means we need to import more, which harms the environment. Rewilding isn’t the silver bullet that many of its adherents claim it to be.
