Rewilding

Up and down the country different councils are turning their efforts to ‘rewilding’—but what is it?

Rewilding is essentially taking an area of land and allowing nature to restore itself. It’s typically applied to large areas, though smaller rewilding projects take place. For example, Rotherham Council planted naturally occurring flowers across numerous central reservations, which has proved a huge success. Not only does rewilding make an area look more attractive than cut grass or concrete, it also encourages wildlife to return and helps to save the bees.

More intensive rewilding can include the reintroduction of apex predators, such as wolves, in the hope of controlling animal populations and bringing them to natural levels. Such efforts have been implemented in Scotland and national parks in the United States with high levels of success.

It sounds like a no brainer, but rewilding has its critics. Some believe it’s simply a fad for wealthy people and landowners to save face, others believe it’s used to justify the removal of humans from the landscape—particularly farmers and indigenous groups.

Many people are choosing to ‘rewild’ their gardens by changing the way they mow their grass and providing areas for animals to live, such as hedgehogs and birds.

One in five county councils are planning or launching rewilding projects. Given that they represent some of the largest landowners in the country, they have the opportunity to rewild places such as former golf courses, abandoned industrial areas, damaged waterways and floodplains. North Somerset Council, for example, has decided to rewild ‘as much land as possible’; they plan to improve the biodiversity of their parks, waterways, agricultural land and coastal areas by 2030.

As things stand, most of the UK’s land is ‘tamed’. True wildlands don’t really exist. I spend a lot of time in the Peak District National Park, and even there, most areas are farmed. Livestock is always grazing there. It’s mostly sheep—which, of course, will eat any grasses and plants they have access to. Rewilding an area would allow wildflowers to return in places where livestock normally destroys them. And, if wildflowers returned, animals that would normally feed on them would come back. This leads to greater biodiversity, which is the whole point of rewilding.