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| Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve |
Rewilding has become an emotive and controversial word in recent
years. To some it is wonderfully positive, a call for the restoration of glory
to wild places. To others it smacks of elitism, exclusion, a threat to countryside
access and ways of life. What though does rewilding actually mean when applied
to Britain and disentangled from overblown desires and overblown fears. In the
mass media it’s often used to mean the reintroduction of big predators such as
wolves and bears – nothing like a story about these to send a frisson of fear
through people and provoke a strong reaction. This comes in part from its origins
in the USA where it was first used by conservationist Dave Foreman, one of the
founders of the interesting Wildlands Network, to mean the conservation and
expansion of ecosystems big enough to support large predators.
In the USA,
though, there are still large wilderness areas, many already with bears, wolves
and mountain lions. The situation is very different here, on a small quite
heavily populated island with no real wilderness and only remnants of natural
forest. For comparison California is over twice the size of mainland Britain
but has only two-thirds the population, Alaska is over eight times the size
with just 750,000 people. We have to think differently.
In Britain rewilding can only mean the restoration of natural processes
to wild places, small and large. It is, I think, the final part of a
conservation strategy. This begins with preservation – stopping the continuing
destruction or degradation of an area – and continues with restoration –
repairing damage. Then the renewal of the land can begin, which is really what
rewilding means, allowing nature to restore itself.
The result of rewilding should be a healthier environment with greater
biodiversity, which benefits everybody. An increasing number of studies show
how important nature is to people’s mental and physical health. Rewilding is
not just for an elite, it’s for everyone. Indeed, we are part of nature, not
apart from it, and the health of nature is our health.
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| In the Cascade Mountains |
Sadly though, what many people regard as a healthy natural
environment is actually quite damaged and degraded. The concept of shifting
baseline syndrome explains this. Each generation tends to assume that the state
of the natural world they grew up with is the norm. This can result in keeping
places in a poor condition or even trying to return them to that condition. This
is a natural reaction. I remember first visiting the Lake District as a boy and
thinking of it as a huge natural wilderness, pristine and perfect. Then I
discovered the Scottish Highlands and thought I’d found paradise (I sometimes
still feel that!). Only after returning from half a year spent walking through
the magnificent wild forests and mountains along the Pacific Crest Trail in the
Western USA did I notice how bare the hills and glens were, how few trees grew
in the British hills. Why weren’t they there? I’d read about the Caledonian
forest in the writings of Frank Fraser Darling but only when I’d seen the
glorious forests in the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountains did I start to
understand what we have lost.
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| In the Sierra Nevada |
Knowing how damaged much of our wild land is could be dispiriting.
The great American conservationist Aldo Leopold in The Sand County Almanac, an important book published in 1949,
decades before the term rewilding had been invented, said ‘ one of the
penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of
wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen’. Today
I think we have more cause to hope than back in the 1940s. More people do
understand the damage that has been done. Educating the others is a key task
though. To support rewilding people need to understand why it’s necessary. Shifting
baseline syndrome again. If you think the land is as it should be you’re not
going to support moves to change it.
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| Glen Affric |
In Britain I think rewilding starts with forest restoration. In
this sense it’s only a new name for something that started many years ago. One
of the key figures in this was the late Dick Balharry, former John Muir Trust Chair, when
he was warden at Beinn Eighe, Britain’s first national nature reserve, in the
1960s (see Beinn Eighe: The Mountain Above The Wood). He continued this work in the 1980s at the Creag Meagaidh National
Nature Reserve. In both places healthy regenerating forests can now be seen,
which is very heartening. Since then forest restoration has increased in many
areas such as the John Muir Trust’s Li and Coire Dhorrcail on Ladhar Bheinn in Knoydart,
which won a Scotland’s Finest Woods Award in 2015, and other JMT estates like
Ben Nevis, Quinag, and East Schiehallion.
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| Glen nevis |
Elsewhere the RSPB at places like Abernethy Forest in the
Cairngorms, many Woodland Trust estates throughout the UK, and Wild Land Ltd's Glen Feshie all have flourishing forest
regeneration. Then there’s the work of Trees for Life in places like GlenAffric and the Borders Forest Trust with the Carrifran Wildwood. Forest and Land Scotland (formerly the Forestry Commission), once a main cause of the destruction of natural forests, is now allowing
some forests to recover such as Glenmore in the Cairngorms. Perhaps most encouraging
of all is when organisations work together to the same ends. Cairngorms Connect
is an encouraging exampled with its “bold and ambitious 200-year vision to
enhance habitats, species and ecological processes across a vast area within
the Cairngorms National Park.”
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| Glen Feshie |
In the Lake District the Wild Ennerdale project is
particularly interesting with its vision ‘to allow the evolution of Ennerdale
as a wild valley for the benefit of people, relying more on natural processes
to shape its landscape and ecology’. That last phrase could be a definition of rewilding.
Like Cairngorms Connect Wild Ennerdale is also a partnership of different bodies, public and private,
and local people. This is important. Rewilding needs the support of communities
and a wide range of organisations. It should grow out of places rather than be
imposed from outside. That means rewilding may be a slow process in some areas,
but local support is essential if it’s to be successful in the long run so if
it takes time to gain that we just have to be patient.
Once forests start to regenerate and spread the richness of
the fauna and flora rapidly increases. Walk through a new forest and see the
wide variety of undergrowth and the number of birds then compare this with the bareness
and silence of a treeless valley. This
was the case at Creag Meagaidh where sheep and deer had led to a bare degraded
landscape. Since it became a nature reserve in 1986 and the over-grazing was
ended the change has been startling as a healthy new forest emerges.
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| Creag Meagaidh National Nature Reserve |
With regeneration wildlife moves in, previously over-grazed
vegetation flourishes. There is a problem in Britain though. And that is being
an island. Animals already here -pine martens, red squirrels, badgers and more –
will move into new forests. Birds can arrive from overseas, mammals can’t. On
mainland Europe predators like wolves, bears and lynx are slowly increasing
their territories. They can’t reach Britain though. Apex predators like these
are not just important for directly controlling the numbers of grazing animals
by hunting them but also by the effect they have on their behaviour, keeping
them moving so they don’t over-graze an area, keeping them out of areas that
could be seen as traps. This concept is known as a trophic cascade and was
first described by Aldo Leopold when he noted overgrazing by deer after wolves
were exterminated.
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| Ryvoan Pass |
We don’t have wolves, but we can mimic their behaviour. In
popular areas this happens by accident. The paths through Glenmore Forest to the
Ryvoan Pass are walked regularly, often by large numbers of people. I’ve never
seen any deer or even signs of deer here. Forest regeneration is extensive. In
the woods round my home there are roe deer. Until a decade or so ago our
neighbours had dogs that often roamed free. Seeing deer was very rare and I
never saw them outside the forest. Since the dogs went the deer have become
bold and I often see them out in the fields far from the nearest trees even in
the middle of the day. They’ve learnt it’s safe to do so.
Trees for Life has an interesting scheme at their Dundreggan Estate in the Scottish Highlands called Project Wolf. In this
teams of volunteers walk through the woods in the evening, night and early
morning to disturb the deer and give seedlings a better chance of survival. I
think this is a fascinating idea that could be used elsewhere.
Until the climate is right for the return of wolves, which I
think is a long time in the future, culling deer, removal or reduction of sheep
numbers, fencing woods, and schemes like Project Wolf are the only ways to
ensure forest regeneration. This in Britain is rewilding.
This is an edited version of a piece originally written for the John Muir Trust.
