Rewilding- Part One

Last month I went to a talk at the University of Leeds all about rewilding in the UK. The talks were given by George Monbiot and Alan Watson-Featherson.

George described how although there are many upland reserves in the UK, they are only maintained to have the lowest level of biodiversity. This is because many years ago, someone decided that heather and scrub should cover most of the land despite the fact that forests would have historically covered these areas. To prevent the regrowth of the forests, sheep were used to over graze the land along with burning and cutting. George found that this is a problem all over the country as in lowlands there are few trees, but, in the uplands, where they would naturally be more, there are even less.

This reversal of the natural order is causing problems like flash floods in the low lands. If more trees were present in the uplands, they would take up the vast majority of water, as well as stabilising the soil so the water and soil can not just run straight down our hillsides.

The idea of shifting baselines was also talked about which I had never considered before! Many people think about the changes occurring in their lifetime and relate everything to that basis - such as our expectation of forest cover in UK. However, if you consider what the baseline was for example, three generations ago, it is a worrying concern to see how much that baseline has already shifted.

But onto rewilding now and what that would mean...
Rewilding means that nature will operate as a self willed system not a human one. Where rewilding has taken place elsewhere in the world the effects have been even more emphatic than most people thought possible. Take, for example, the wolves in Yellowstone National Park that actually helped to reshape the rivers due to trophic cascades. By adding in an apex predator, such as the wolf, it affected even how the landscape and how it was used.

Another example of this is in Ireland where Grey Squirrels have been driven out, Pine martins were introduced and are able to hunt the Grey squirrels as they are heavier and bigger than the Red squirrels so the Reds can run to the end of the tree branches. This is the natural order where native species come out on top as they are already adapted to living alongside their predators.