An Ordinary Human’s Guide To….Rewilding

This series hopes to break down key sustainable terms and ideas to make them more accessible for everyone to understand and use to make change. If you are already are familiar with these ideas, refresh your mind and use your knowledge, but if this is new to you, read on and learn!

Welcome to rewilding – your new best friend! This is a fantastic concept to understand as its a nature based solution that we can use in the fight against climate change as well as restoring wildlife and their habitats.

What is it? Rewilding is a form of environmental conservation and restoration that allows natural environments to return to an ecological balance by letting them evolve naturally. It also includes us humans learning to live more in tune with nature, instead of being separate to the natural world. For a visual explanation, check out this video from The Scottish Rewilding Alliance (The Scottish Rewilding Alliance) and the resources on their website, especially if you live in Scotland 🌳

For instance, there are many beautiful places in the UK we think of as natural: The Lake District, The Scottish Highlands, etc……. However, these majestic, bare mountains we see are not in their natural condition, but have been mainly shaped over many years by human practices, like sheep farming, so that instead of native woodlands and natural habitats for our wildlife, we have these barren landscapes we are used to today. While these places are still beautiful, the stories we have accepted about the landscape being completely natural is untrue (the ‘artificial natural’), and can cause conflict between those who want to conserve the landscape and those who want to farm it, for instance.

What can I do? On an individual scale, you can embrace rewilding in your garden. If you have your own green space, let a part of it or the whole thing go wild. It could be part of your lawn, a tucked away corner of your garden or a shrub/hedge. While it may look ‘messy’ at first, over time nature will restore its own balance and create a rich habitat, increasing biodiversity and the visitors to your garden.

If you want to learn more, there are increasing numbers of resources and places which have rewilded to use as an example. A pioneering example in the UK is the Knepp experiment, talked about in Wilding by Isabella Tree (Wilding by Isabella Tree | Waterstones). Other interesting reading includes: Rewild Yourself by Simon Barnes (Rewild Yourself by Simon Barnes | Waterstones), Feral by George Monbiot (Feral by George Monbiot | Waterstones) and Rewilding by Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe (Rewilding by Paul Jepson, Cain Blythe | Waterstones) along with many others.

Get involved with rewilding projects local to you, either on a regional or national scale. Here are some links for national and international rewilding bodies in Scotland (The Scottish Rewilding Alliance), Britain (Think Big. Act Wild. | Rewilding Britain), Europe (What is rewilding? | Rewilding Europe) and the world (Rewilding Earth Welcome – Home of the Rewilding Institute). It may be talking to your local council or MP about letting road verges grow wild, volunteering at rewilding projects such as beaver reintroduction in the UK (an example of bringing back key species to help natural habitats keep balance) or even campaigning at a national level to raise awareness about rewilding, as in Scotland where they are attempting to be the world’s first rewilding nation.

Rewilding allows us the opportunity to turn the tide on environmental degradation and instead offer a sustainable home for our vulnerable native wildlife. So lets say goodbye to neat and tidy, and embrace the wild in our gardens, parks and countryside. Say hello to the wild side! 🏞