Learning to live in a land where the wild things are

Traditional conservation methods have managed only to slow the decline. Rewilding involves a bolder approach in which humans cease to exploit large areas and allow natural processes to take over.

With 72 per cent of the UK used for agriculture, this inevitably means taking some farmland out of production, prompting a fierce debate about whether food security should be sacrificed to benefit wildlife. The UK’s self-sufficiency in food has declined from 78 per cent in the mid-1980s to about 64 per cent, though this is partly because we are now eating a lot more food that we cannot easily grow here, such as avocados and bananas.

While the term rewilding first appeared in print in 1990, interest has risen sharply in recent years, with at least 14 books published since 2019 that have the word in the title. The singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran attracted headlines with his promise in December to “rewild as much of the UK as I can”, and big landowners are under pressure to join the movement, with the broadcaster Chris Packham leading calls for the royal family to rewild their estates.

George Eustice, the environment secretary, spoke favourably of rewilding in January when announcing plans to fund 15 “landscape recovery” projects ranging from 1,200 to 12,000 acres. The website of the charity Rewilding Britain now lists 63 rewilding projects.

Rewilding began well before it acquired a catchy name, however. In the 1980s Frans Vera, a Dutch ecologist, led the reintroduction of hardy breeds of cattle and ponies as proxies for their extinct ancestors in the Oostvaardersplassen, a 15,000-acre nature reserve east of Amsterdam.

A lack of predators and a run of mild winters caused the large animal population to boom to more than 5,000, until a harsh winter in 2017-18 resulted in most being shot by rangers before they could starve. Protesters who threw hay bales over the fence to feed the animals were threatened with fines.

Opponents of rewilding have seized on these events, but some supporters say that the winter die-off of animals is part of the cycle of nature and benefits other species by reducing grazing pressure.

Vera helped to inspire Sir Charles Burrell and his wife Isabella Tree, who have created England’s most celebrated rewilding project at their 3,500-acre Knepp Castle estate in West Sussex.

They initially tried intensifying the estate’s loss-making dairy and arable farm but heavy clay soils meant that debts continued to mount and in 2000 they embarked on an alternative plan to restore it to nature. With the help of about £400,000 a year in government subsidies and an ecotourism business, they made the estate profitable as well as a haven for wildlife. Rare species such as turtle doves, nightingales, peregrine falcons and purple emperor butterflies are now breeding there.

Rewilding projects may in future be able to fund themselves by receiving payments for storing carbon in soil, trees and wetlands. Tree says that the carbon content of the soil at Knepp has doubled since rewilding began and the estate has “gone from being a massive carbon emitter under intensive farming to being a carbon sink”.

The campaign group Rewilding Britain says that it wants to see 5 per cent of Britain being rewilded by 2030, up from about 1 per cent now, and “major nature recovery” across another 25 per cent of the land.

Examples of rewilding given by the charity include expanding and connecting ancient woodlands, restoring marine ecosystems and bringing back missing species.

The latter is the most controversial element of rewilding, with sheep farmers fiercely opposing proposals to reintroduce lynx in particular and many landowners concerned about beaver dams flooding their land. There is also some opposition to white-tailed eagles, which may occasionally prey on lambs. Police are investigating the suspicious deaths this year of two of the birds that were released in a reintroduction project on the Isle of Wight.

Tim Bonner, chief executive of the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance, says that use of the term rewilding could be counterproductive, putting off farmers who might otherwise be willing to change practices to benefit wildlife.

However, Professor Alastair Driver, director of Rewilding Britain, argues that more people will be inspired to support rewilding if those engaged in it are open and honest about what they are doing. He has criticised the National Trust, which is rewilding several of its sites, over its refusal to use the term.

The trust says that it does not use the term because “it means so many different things to different people”. It also fears alienating its tenant farmers.

The trust’s caution seems misplaced because rewilding is no longer a fringe activity. It has been given an official definition by the International Union for Conservation of Nature: “The process of rebuilding, following major human disturbance, a natural ecosystem by restoring natural processes.” The union has also made clear that the term does not mean excluding human activity or stopping farming.

There is growing evidence that rewilding benefits people as well as wildlife, providing cleaner air, carbon storage and improving health and wellbeing thanks to the healing powers of spending time in nature.

The broadcaster Sir David Attenborough lamented “our blind assault on the planet” when launching his 2020 documentary A Life On Our Planet. But he also offered a solution: “We must rewild the world. Rewilding the world is easier than you think. A century from now our planet could be a wild place again.”

Tony Juniper, who has led Natural England since 2019, says momentum is growing towards a more rewilded Britain

ROBERTO RICCIUTI/GETTY IMAGES

‘Rewilding helps humans too: nature brings us solace’
Tony Juniper is a passionate supporter of rewilding but has tended to use the less controversial term “nature recovery” since becoming chairman of Natural England three years ago. He has worked hard to reassure farmers that they need not fear his background as a former director of Friends of the Earth and a Green Party parliamentary candidate. He has suggested previously that he was seeking to return only a tiny proportion of England to the wild.

Now, having been reappointed for a second three-year term, Juniper, 61, is revealing more of his ambition to give wildlife free rein across swathes of the landscape and to restore lost species such as lynx.

He is launching a species recovery task force and encouraging those who are keen on rewilding to bid for new public funding for up to 15 pilot landscape recovery projects, each covering 1,200 to 12,000 acres.

These projects will focus on two themes: restoring England’s threatened native species and returning rivers and floodplains to a “more natural state”.

In 2019 Juniper told MPs at a select committee hearing to confirm his appointment that he wanted to rewild 1 per cent of England by 2030. Now he tells The Times that he hopes the 1 per cent will just be the beginning. Rewilding, he says, will play a core role in reversing the loss of wildlife and helping the UK to meet its target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. “As we gather more evidence about the interaction between carbon capture, nature recovery, climate change adaptation, and indeed water security, I think that we would be seeing the opportunities to go further than 1 per cent,” he says.

He dismisses the claim by some in the farming industry that rewilding large areas of the countryside will undermine food security. Juniper quotes evidence published last year in the National Food Strategy, a government-commissioned report by Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain.

It found that the least productive 20 per cent of land yielded only 3 per cent of calories, saying: “There is a serendipitous overlap between some of the areas that produce the least food and those which are best suited to nature restoration.”

Any reduction in domestic food production could therefore be made up by reducing food waste, Juniper believes. “If you remember that about a third of our food is feeding bins and compost rather than people, just reducing food waste by 10 per cent would enable us to make up that 3 per cent of loss if we took a fifth of our land and turned it more towards nature recovery,” he says.

He says research shows that leaving field margins uncultivated could actually improve yield by nourishing pollinators and animals that prey on pests.

His optimism about the opportunities for rewilding stems partly from conversations he has had with farmers who are much more willing to contemplate it now that they realise it offers new income streams in the form of Environmental Land Management scheme subsidies and payments for carbon storage.

“Conversations [are] happening across the country, with groups of farmers — not only individual farmers — coming together and thinking about how it might be possible to take steps in this direction. None of them, as far as I’m aware, are saying this is an alternative to food production. They’re saying it goes hand in hand.”

Juniper describes the creation of the England Species Reintroductions task force as an exciting step that could pave the way for the reintroduction of lost species such as lynx. The government sought applications in January for the chairmanship of the task force, which will provide independent advice.

He says that before lynx could be reintroduced in England or Scotland, the results of a detailed feasibility study are needed to help to identify suitable areas. That will be followed by “very careful discussion with the different stakeholders in those landscapes to understand their concerns”.

He suggests that the reintroduction of beavers in Scotland and then England over the past decade could provide a model for bringing back lynx, which may have clung on in Scotland until the 18th century.

“I was pleasantly surprised by the way in which the conversation changed on beavers. As recently as ten years ago, it [their reintroduction] looked like a remote prospect but we’re now on the verge of seeing a government policy that I hope will be backing a careful approach to beavers coming back into the landscape across England.”

Juniper says that rewilding is popular, with surveys showing “a very strong body of support for the return of different creatures”. Rewilding projects benefit people too, he adds. “There is a misconception around rewilding that it’s about removing people. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Rewilding goes hand in hand with bringing a whole range of benefits to the human world, including the opportunity to enjoy wild experiences.”

Juniper believes visiting wild spaces is “highly beneficial” for human wellbeing and that the pandemic showed the importance of this.

“We couldn’t go shopping or see loved ones or go to the park to meet friends. One of the ways people sought solace was to go outside into the natural world. Wild places bring a fascination which many people are discovering with great joy and enthusiasm.”