World Rewilding Day 2024
Introduction
Looking ahead to World Rewilding Day on 20th March, we answer a common question: what is “rewilding”?
This is a term that is being increasingly used, with more and more rewilding projects being launched across the UK. However, it is still a relatively new term, and one that often fuels quite a bit of debate!
We’re still often asked what “rewilding” means. There are two parts to our answer. We thought we’d share this with you ahead of World Rewilding Day. We’ll be celebrating the day with other rewilding projects around the globe.
The Theory
The first is to acknowledge that there are academic, theoretical definitions of the word “rewilding”.
Today, the definition is still debated among university professors, ecologists, practitioners and many more. One thing this debate recognises is that “rewilding” still has many interpretations.
But the truth is, we don’t tend to get too bothered by some of this debate. Instead we prefer to focus on what we can do ourselves to restore nature.
In many ways, a very true or “pure” interpretation of rewilding is not possible to implement in modern day Britain. Too many important species are extinct on our island, particularly larger herbivores (like Elk) or predators (like Lynx) which were critical in creating diverse ecosystems before human settlement. And the impact of humans on our landscape is so widespread, there is now no going back. We need to work within the constraints of the world we have inherited.
This brings is onto the second, longer part to our answer. This is about our rewilding approach at Wild Ken Hill. It’s about how we apply it in modern day England.
Rewilding at Wild Ken Hill
We tend to think of rewilding as a different style of conservation. It’s another tool in the box for those of us trying to restore nature and fight climate change. And it can be extraordinarily effective.
We think there are several important ways that rewilding differs from traditional forms of conservation. Firstly, to us rewilding means letting nature take the lead on how habitats and ecosystems develop, not humans. In traditional conservation, humans actively shape the landscape. We create ponds, plant trees, carefully manage the finest details.
In rewilding systems, we aim to let nature steer our course. We let trees, scrub and flowers plant themselves through natural regeneration. We let water go where it wants, not where we want it to go, leading to diverse and “messy” landscapes which are wonderful for nature. Wild herbivores graze and browse where they wish, keeping some areas open while others grow up into scrub and eventually forest. Importantly, keystone species like the Eurasian Beaver (which we reintroduced to Wild Ken Hill four years ago) shape and manage the landscapes around them, not humans.
The other important difference between rewilding and traditional forms of conservation is rewilding’s focus on natural processes. By contrast, we see traditional conservation focusing on outcomes. When practising the latter, we specify what outcomes we want to see from specific pieces of land then work backwards. For example, we might say we want to see 25 pairs of breeding Northern Lapwing on the freshwater marshes, then create our management plans to deliver this outcome.
Conversely, in a rewilding system, we don’t conceive of outcomes at the beginning. In fact, one of the exciting aspects of rewilding is that we often don’t know what outcomes will be achieved. There are surprises along the way.
Instead, we aim to put natural processes back in place. A natural process can be anything from natural grazing to hydrological processes like allowing rivers to spill into their floodplains during heavy rainfall. Any process that takes place in a healthy, functioning ecosystem.
So at the beginning of a rewilding project, we look at the natural processes that are missing, and which can be put back. At Wild Ken Hill, this was principally the lack of natural grazing, soil disturbance, natural regeneration of woodland trees, and the flow of water through the site, which was all directed by ditches.
We corrected this by introducing Red Poll cattle, Exmoor ponies, and Tamworth pigs into the landscape, which all bring many natural processes. They graze, browse, carry seeds around in their fur, cycle nutrients in their dung and many more. We also reintroduced Eurasian beavers, which dam and fell trees to create wet, wild woodlands – more natural processes.
With these in place, as humans we can sit back more, letting events unfold, shaped by nature itself. Of course, we track the outcomes with research and monitoring. For example, we know that this approach has helped double the average number of plants per plot in the rewilding area. But we are not led by outcomes in the same way.
As an aside, we practice traditional conservation too on wetlands and a chalk stream river. So we’re definitely not knocking it. We just aim to do the right thing in the right place. In some places, we need traditional conservation, and in others, we need rewilding. And we also know that production of healthy food is important too!
Pragmatism when rewilding
As well as acknowledging that there is not a “one size fits all approach”, we also recognise that we can’t be totally passive and nature-led in modern day England. We are obliged as humans to intervene in our rewilding area for legal and ethical reasons, as well as for ecological reasons some times.
For example, if one of our Red Poll cattle has a medical issue, we’ll call a vet to help us solve the problem. We won’t let animals suffer as they may have done in extraordinarily cold winters thousands of years ago. We also collect our cattle every four years for Tuberculosis testing, and tag the ears of newborn calves – a legal requirement.
There are also a handful of interventions we need to make for ecological reasons. These almost all relate to the presence of Invasive Non-native Species (INNS). For example, there are legacy populations of Rhododendron Ponticum in the rewilding area. This is an invasive plant that can severely impact other woodland species by crowding out other vegetation and preventing the natural generation of our native trees and plants, leading to knock-on negative impacts to birds, bats, insects and much more.
To counter this threat, we have a programme to remove and (hopefully) eventually eradicate rhododendron from the rewilding area. This is another intervention we make, but for sound ecological reasons.
To finish
We have our interpretation of rewilding at Wild Ken Hill. This approach works within the constraints of our landscape, and is already helping to benefit biodiversity. This doesn’t mean it’s perfect or will be appropriate for other places and landscapes. We’re always looking to make improvements to our approach, but we hope in the meantime that sharing our thinking ahead of World Rewilding Day has been interesting and informative.
Headline photo credit: Sam Rose