Wild at heart: Eight experts on the reality of rewilding
The editor of The Rural Report distils five years of wisdom gained from some of the UK’s most experienced ‘rewilders’
The events of recent years have sharpened our collective focus on the environment and heightened our appreciation of the beauty of the countryside. For many of us, the benefits of being in nature and today’s new world of flexible working have led to seeking out a new home outside the city.
Beyond shifting the focus of our lives from metropolitan townhouses to rolling hills and dales, this mass ‘escape to the country’ has encouraged many landowners to think differently as they invest in their land. Creating a rural idyll with space for nature to thrive has become an important objective for many – rewilding, a new mantra.
I’ve seen this first-hand in my work for The Wealth Report and The Rural Report, and I’ve been fortunate enough to speak to many in the vanguard of the nature restoration movement. Here are some fascinating and at times controversial insights from those interviews, to guide the new breed of rewilding enthusiasts on their journeys. I hope these prove to be inspiring.
Jake Fiennes
Director of Holkham Nature Reserve, author of Land Healer
"If we look at farming over the last 70 years we cannot deny that it has had an impact. The biggest challenge for agriculture is climate change, which is happening today. The current way we produce food is not going to work for another 100 years so we really need to evaluate what we’re producing, and how we’re producing it. The climate crisis is inextricably linked to the biodiversity crisis. Where there is fully functioning nature, carbon is being captured and sequestered."
THE RURAL REPORT 2022
Isabella Tree
Author of Wilding
“The world already produces enough food to feed 10 billion people, 2.5 billion more people than are alive today. What’s so shocking is that about a third of that – some 1.3 billion tonnes – is wasted every year.”
THE RURAL REPORT 2019
Ben Goldsmith
Farmer, investor and government advisor
“Brexit is a massive opportunity to completely reimagine how the £3 billion that is given to farmers in the form of CAP payments is spent and distributed on a market-led, catchment-level basis. The beauty of this new approach is that those farms that have become the most marginalised economically are typically in the upper catchment areas where many of these potential services can be delivered.”
THE RURAL REPORT 2018
Dr Lisbet Rausing
Landowner and philanthropist
“Do not manage for individual species – you’re a landscape guardian, but the missing pieces of the ecological puzzle can be tiny, yet essential. The near-extinction of wood ants in Britain is a big problem for woodland ecology. Freshwater ecologies and marine landscapes are also often overlooked and infamously poorly managed.”
THE RURAL REPORT 2019
Charlie Burrell
Owner of the Knepp Estate
“We have purposefully not tried to recreate habitats for the benefit of specific species like nightingales, but to let nature take its own course and see what returns of its own accord. The results have been beyond what we could ever have hoped for. Even in intensively farmed areas there is room to have some woolly edges and let nature in, and those practising regenerative agriculture have proven that you can still have high yields while looking after your soils and the environment.”
THE RURAL REPORT 2019
Dr David Heatherington
Author of The Lynx and Us
“For some, the idea of bringing large carnivores back into Britain’s busy human modified countryside may seem ludicrous. However, the Eurasian lynx has been subject to a dozen or so reintroduction projects across Europe since the 1970s, to wooded, hilly regions, which are well populated by people and used for farming, forestry, tourism and hunting.”
THE RURAL REPORT 2021
Eva Bishop
Communications Director at The Beaver Trust
“The beaver is equipped with some of the skills to tackle man’s biggest challenges – biodiversity loss, carbon sequestration, drought and water quality. Beavers breathe life into streams and rivers, returning drained ditches to thriving living systems. Their influence across a riparian landscape is not something to underestimate.”
THE RURAL REPORT 2021
Anders Holch Povlsen
Landowner and rewilder
“We’re involved with conservation projects in Scotland, Romania and Africa. You might call it philanthropy – I prefer to think of it as investing in the natural world: bolstering natural capital, supporting ecosystems and creating opportunities for things that are vital for future wellbeing, quality of life and economic growth. We’ve forgotten that the natural world is the very foundation of a good life on this planet, and I think it’s a shame that our most valuable asset is so undervalued and unappreciated.”
THE WEALTH REPORT 2020
The next issue of The Rural Report will be published in June 2023.