A few years ago my brother got me a book for Christmas. Feral, written by the Guardian columnist, George Monbiot, introduced me to rewilding, a concept which has floated around in my head ever since.
I’m going to keep things simple (as I like to do) and define rewilding as restoring something back to its natural state.
In this blog, I’m going to explore how we can rewild the land, how we might rewild ourselves and discuss the huge benefits rewilding offers us should we choose to embrace it.
Rewilding can, and most often, refers to land. We can rewild land by restoring it to its natural state, freeing it of human disruption and allowing it time to recover. Ideally, we would allow nature to repair any damage but where human interference has decimated the original landscape, nature may need a hand in restoring the balance. We can do this by planting the trees and plants that once inhabited the land and ridding it of any alien species.
More exciting still is the reintroduction of bird and animal species to restore the ecosystem. Certain species if reintroduced can galvanise an environment in the most remarkable ways. We’ll get to that in a minute.
But we can also rewild ourselves. In a world of processed food, we can harvest and consume what nature has provided for us to improve our diets. By immersing ourselves in the countryside we can re-learn new skills that connect us to nature and to each other. We can accumulate the knowledge needed to protect and preserve healthy ecosystems. We can pass that knowledge on so future generations will respect and value nature, enjoying it as we do now.
By rewilding our countryside and ourselves we are providing ourselves with a more stable and enriched environment in which we can escape the pressures of modern life. By rewilding ourselves we can enjoy that sense of calm that comes from reconnecting with nature. By rewilding our diet, we can find huge health benefits from a huge range of flora, much of which is right under our noses. More of that later too.
And for the cynics, much of rewilding makes economic sense too. By restoring places to natural vibrancy we can build ecotourism. We can harvest and sell foods, we can build furniture, create art, develop communities for well being that make people more socially interactive and employable. This is not theory either, these things are happening now. Done right, it can cost little and create jobs.
Wolves, Red Kites and the Lynx effect at Kielder
One of the most exciting yet controversial ways of rewilding is to reintroduce species back into the landscape. This can have a huge impact on the ecosystems and the landscape itself.
The reintroduction of Wolves into Yellowstone Park after an absence of decades is perhaps the most dramatic and astounding example of this. By controlling the number of deer in the park and changing the behaviour of the deer (deer avoided the places they could be most easily ambushed) the wolves enabled trees to grow free from grazing.
Trees grew back near rivers allowing beavers to return, felling some trees to dam rivers creating wetlands, habitats for all manner of species.
With more trees there was less soil erosion which actually meant less slippage so rivers did not meander as much. Wolves actually changed the course of rivers! For a bit more on this watch this five minute documentary narrated by the aforementioned Mr Monbiot.
Most of us are very familiar with Red Kites these days as they glide over our fields, valleys and even our housing estates. This beautiful raptor was reintroduced after suffering the effects of excessive shooting and poaching near the end of the last century. Primarily a scavenger, it helps prevent disease by cleaning up carcasses and taking weaker prey keeping populations healthy.
The Red Kite’s face adorns the buses of the north east running between Newcastle and Consett. The route passes the original release site of Rowlands Gill for whose residents the Red Kites are as regular as the buses themselves.
This is perhaps the best example of rewilding through reintroduction. Another proposed reintroduction has caused a great deal more controversy.
Plans to reintroduce the Eurasian Lynx into the UK are at an advanced stage. The Lynx would be the UK’s only large cat and its introduction into a few of the UK’s larger forests would be to control the deer population for much the same reason the wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone.
In Kielder forest, the Lynx would control Roe Deer and alter their behaviour in a way that culling deer through shooting, could not. Whilst there are concerns over Lynx taking livestock and there being a danger to people, a survey by the Lynx trust found 92% of 10 000 people interviewed favoured a return for the Lynx. Somewhat surprisngly, the majority of the respondents were people living in rural areas were very pro Lynx.
The Lynx Trust argued that the presence of the Lynx would breath new life into the economy of these rural communities. From their cost benefit analysis, the Trust estimated a £23-52 million pound benefit to the Kielder region in eco tourism over its reintroduction period and beyond.
For more information and a detailed breakdown of the figures visit http://www.lynxuk.org/
Rewilding our Diets
Rewilding our food is something we’re constantly being advised to do. Most of us just know that the cheap, convenient and addictive processed food we consume is not the best source of nutrition. Many of us struggle to get our five a day and the high sugar society we live in is increasing cases of both child and adult diabetes, obesity and heart disease.
But whilst not every item in the supermarket is a Monsanto horror story, most of us instinctively recognise that ‘what comes from the earth is of the greatest worth’ is true and that healthier meals tend to be cooked from scratch because you can see what is going into them.
Part of rewilding ourselves is to harvest and consume what nature gives us and she gives us a lot. Walking within a five mile radius of my house, I have managed to find fruits, berries and nuts many of which I ate on the spot. Other times I’d return with tupperware to plunder a bounty that might end up in smoothies, bread, pies or puddings (ok so not always a healthy outcome as far as I’m concerned.)
I found apples, plums, cherries, blackberries, billberries, elderberries, gooseberries, raspberries, wild strawberries and huge numbers of wood nuts (hazel nuts.) I also found a natural spring in a wood from where I could collect clear, fresh drinking water.
What really surprised me was the quantity of wild food available in such a small area once I knew what I was looking for.
Of course, you need a sage friend to guide you to the edible stuff. You don’t want to sit and eat a mushroom which summons Pegasus to land in front of you or find yourself hearing Gollum whispering to you from behind a rock.
There are many foraging courses which will give you the confidence to pick your wild food and are a good first step to rewilding ourselves. Picking wild food with others is a very calming cooperative experience and following the process through to the dinner table is a very satisfying experience.
Here are a few wild foods to get you started, courtesy of my rewilded friend David Middlemiss.
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Dandelion root – roasted makes a wonderful coffee type beverage and totally anti carcinogenic. Helps regenerate damaged cells
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Nettles -extremely high protein, great in soups, juiced.
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Velvet shank mushrooms – one of the few snow frost thriving mushrooms. Out now on tree stumps, dead trees. Brown velvet stalk, ochre yellow. Unmistakeable gel like substance on the cap that when cooked creates its own gravy.
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Blackberry leaf tea – high antioxidant qualities, flushes kidneys, liver, digestive system. Ten leaves in water are so rich in tannins they decimate tummy and sickness bugs.
Actively Rewilding
There are many projects under way where people come together as a community to rewild areas where richness and ecological diversity have been lost. Projects at New Caledonian Woodlands and Taliesin under Screel are great examples of rewilding in action.
https://newcaledonianwoodlands.org/
Many trees have been lost to intensive agriculture and key indigenous species have been over looked in favour of more manageable species where replanting has occurred. Programmes have arisen to replant the indigenous trees that will kickstart ecosystems, luring wildlife back and restoring the land back to ecological health.
People working together to achieve these rewilding objectives are actively rewilding themselves, acquiring new skills and learning about the land, how it can be used sustainably.
Latent talents are discovered through rewilding. Creative stimuli is huge. Some people find themselves adept at bushcraft, willow weaving or furniture making. Environmental art is a growing industry as is cooking and brewing the fruits of the forests for an ever growing health market.
At its heart, rewilding is about reconnecting to nature to restore ourselves physically and emotionally. You can engage in it at different levels from replanting a woodland to picking blackberries on a Sunday afternoon. If we are to sustain our countryside and our appreciation of it amidst a wave of 21st century distractions, then rewilding offers us a means of repelling the tide.
Further Reading
I’d recommend two very different books for further reading (via an amazon affiliate link.) The excellent Feral by George Monbiot and the intriguing Being A Beast by Charles Foster which takes rewilding to a whole new level.
