Visions of habitats teeming with nature are powerful, particularly so in an age of extinction. Rewilding, which offers the promise of such transformations, was once something most would have imagined happening far away, carried out by people unlike them, but times are changing. The wilderness is getting closer to home and more personal.
In the past few months, there have been two suspected lynx releases and one of feral pigs in a small area of the Cairngorms, along with reports of a rise in “beaver bombing” on England’s rivers, and wild boar roaming Dartmoor.
These acts may have Robin Hood appeal, but the rearing and release of large mammals goes some way beyond the well-established phenomenon of “guerrilla gardening”, where people sow native plants on land without express permission, or even the letting loose of rare butterflies in nature reserves (also a trending phenomenon).
On the latter point, butterfly specialist Matthew Oates notes that ad hoc butterfly releases have been going on for more than two centuries, with Winston Churchill a notable practitioner.
The latest wave of rogue activity, Oates says, is “fuelled by butterfly enthusiasts seeing a plethora of seemingly suitable but unoccupied habitat, which isn’t going to get colonised naturally, and a degree of disillusionment with nature conservation bodies”.
As with mammals, trying to establish what has been unofficially introduced, as opposed to arisen from natural colonisation, involves “a lot of mythology and assumption,” he says. But there are many “highly reputable” breeders of butterflies with long-established reputations – something that rings less true when it comes to large animals.
“I think some people who have taken matters into their own hands potentially have a quite romantic view of what it’s like to be a wild animal out there. It’s not just about opening the crate and letting them go,” says Roisin Campbell-Palmer, head of restoration for the Beaver Trust.
“We should always put the animals first. We can celebrate the enthusiasm and the attitude of some people to shove two fingers to the system, but if those animals aren’t accepted and if they face prolonged or ongoing persecution, then I struggle ethically when asking: ‘Is this right, have we all done a good job here, and can we truly call this species restoration?’”
She acknowledges that without rogue releases, beavers would not be back in Britain on a more formal basis – but fears that some bridges have been permanently burned because of the experiment. “Fingers can always be pointed. In retrospect, it’s very hard to encourage people to then accept the animals and coexist with them when they feel it wasn’t their choice and they weren’t involved.”
A group of scientists working to restore predator communities have come out strongly against the Scottish lynx releases. It’s a view Campbell-Palmer shares. “What was the long-term outlook likely to be for those animals? They weren’t behaviourally ready for the wild. And to me, that’s just thrown up a big potential case of straight-out cruelty,” she says.
“I hope that’s been a bit of a wake-up call for people who think you can just put large mammals back and it’ll all be fine. I’m very empathetic with people who get frustrated with the speed of change, but this rationale of ‘just get them out there and they’ll be accepted in the end’, I do struggle with that.”
While charismatic species wandering free grab many of the headlines, a less bombastic phenomenon is growing: community groups are buying smaller patches of the landscape to interpret rewilding as they see fit.
The Covid-19 pandemic prompted many to dream of wide-open spaces and nature in bloom, but one group in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, decided to get on with making it happen.
The collective, from a variety of professional backgrounds, began by getting 3,000 shareholders to buy a £50 stake through a crowdfunding platform to acquire the 12-hectare (30-acre) Long Lands Common on the outskirts of the town. They have recently completed another fundraising drive to add another 24 hectares of land, known as Knaresborough Forest Park, which has been out of public hands since 1770.
“Everyone’s come together around this singular ambition, to protect, to restore, and to just provide more space for nature in the community. We’ve found there are very few people who don’t seem to agree with that,” says George Eglese, a designer and the youngest member of the team behind the project.
“I think before Long Lands existed, there wasn’t really anyone in the area who was doing this kind of work, and there was a lot of apathy in the town: people wanted change, but felt they couldn’t effect it. Long Lands created a platform, and there’s a sense that ‘we’ve got all this resource now – let’s do as much as we can to ensure the safety of our natural environment’.”
As well as offering nature right next to accessible transport, and forging links with schools and charities, the project is also hoping to supply local food banks with fresh produce through a community food field, and offer a sustainable source of wood via the reintroduction of coppicing. They even hope that, in time, the site may attract some of those charismatic big beasts.
“What we’re talking about is reversing nature depletion, and that means increasing biodiversity, whether it’s for fauna, fungi, the small and medium-sized things,” says Ian Fraser, the project’s woodland officer. “Do those things, the ecosystems are stronger, then the larger animals will come back on their own.”
Despite doing things by the book, groups working to bring more wildness into communities are not against a touch of righteous anger and rebellion. There’s a trend for struggles against threats to habitats turning into reimaginations of them: the story of Long Lands Common began as a protest against a relief road that would have run through the Nidd Gorge. In Liverpool, a smaller patch of habitat began with a community halting a proposed deal between the council and Redrow Homes to build on a park.
More than simply saving Calderstones Park, the Liverpool campaign group went on to develop 1.5 hectares of semi-derelict land into a nature reserve, using some novel techniques that have won the admiration of urban planting experts. They have sown a wildflower meadow over concrete using a soil made from Mersey grit and crushed stone, introduced rescued hedgehogs, seen a big uptick in bats and are working on specialist butterfly habitat.
“The council talked about rewilding and making it butterfly-friendly, but all that meant is they didn’t cut the grass,” says Caroline Williams from the group. “Without greater effort, a lot of it became just a sheer mess, with Himalayan balsam and Japanese knotweed [invasive plant species] coming in. There was definitely a feeling that if we don’t do it, nobody else will.”
High-profile support has emerged for an even more personal form of rewilding. Financier and environmentalist Ben Goldsmith recently urged anyone with savings to buy land for rewilding, describing it as “the most rewarding, joyful and most impactful thing you can possibly do”.
For those not willing to go solo and put their savings on the line, the UK has now got – at least in theory – structures in place to financially support rewilding at all manner of scales. Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) legislation means that when new developments cannot feasibly create adequate habitat onsite to compensate for what they have damaged or depleted, plus 10% more, biodiversity projects, including relatively small community-managed patches of the landscape, can offer an offsite investment solution.
Infrastructure is being added to BNG soon, which is likely to work especially well for projects such as the London Tree Ring, which aims to provide connective tree cover surrounding the capital, while also linking up smaller-scale community projects. Christoph Warrack, chief executive of the nature recovery consultancy Common, has been visiting potential sites.
“This is reforestation on the edge of lots of the biggest construction and infrastructure projects in the country. It’s a really easy fit, because you can essentially connect each part to an individual development project and create the Biodiversity Net Gain credits,” says Warrack.
“But we want those credits to happen anywhere. It’s important for quite complex mechanisms like that to be simplified and made available to communities, so that they’ve got a more powerful economic rationale for taking the plunge and acquiring their land.”
As well as these moves to boost biodiversity on a national scale, and a boom in crowdfunding for nature, there is also philanthropic funding out there willing to support local action. Knaresborough Forest Park received a loan on generous terms from the organisation We Have the Power, while Common is being backed by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to build new financial models for communities to move faster in snapping up land on the market.
British people’s love for wildlife, in a notably biodiversity-depleted country, is renowned. As such, rewilding was never going to remain purely the domain of large estates beyond the horizon. The fact that flagship projects have inspired efforts to bring the idea closer to home is a testament to their success, and it’s fair to say that was always at least partly the point.
While most people wanting to make a personal impact are likely to find the comfort and increased financial clout of groups – and the safety of working within existing systems – the most desirable option, for some, permits and certificates, rules and regulations will always be the antithesis of nature. Officialdom will probably win the day, but the rebels could have some influence on how fast things are done.
“Biodiversity is a whole huge multiplicity of dimensions, and then you add people, and the relationships between people and biodiversity. Welcome to planet Earth; this is life and all its glorious complexity,” says Warrack.
“At the heart of that are some simple principles about place and people that have been clearly mapped out. What all these projects and ideas have in common is nature and nature recovery. And that is in everybody’s interest.”
