I picked up Wilding: The return of nature to a British farm through the Calgary Public Library system when their New Releases display caught my eye. The book chronicles the journey of estate owners Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell as they transitioned from unprofitable conventional farmers to conservation pioneers. Taking land on the Knepp estate out of agriculture production and turning it over to the natural forces at work in the English countryside, they witnessed a remarkable explosion of biodiversity, soil improvement and water management.
It was an immediately gripping read. The provocative, refreshingly positive message was a needed balm to a soul ravaged by the bad news cycle that accosts anyone like me who works in the natural sciences. She quotes Aldo Leopold to drive this point home, “one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” Amidst the doom-and-gloom scenarios of contemporary rampant biodiversity loss, soil degradation, exponential human population growth and climate change, here was a story of hope and an opportunity for optimism.
It was effusively delightful to read about nature reclaiming the farmland. Tree unabashedly lists the species from the introduced megafauna grazers (Fallow deer, Roe deer, red deer, Old English longhorn cattle, Exmoor ponies, Tamworth pigs) to the plants, insects and birds that made found their way on their own. Amidst the science and catalogues of species, Tree effectively weaves in threads of history (e.g., centuries-old oaks that have lived through significant points in English history).
What made for especially interesting reading were the examples of unanticipated benefits. Species arrived to claim habitat that was previously classified as unsuitable for them (e.g., turtle doves, nightingales, peregrine falcons and purple emperor butterflies). These antidotes show the benefits of ecosystem-wide approaches and limited interventions that contrast sharply with many species-specific conservation efforts. As Tree puts it, “if we had not allowed a dynamic ecosystem to establish here, we would never have had turtle doves in the first place” and “It was becoming clear to Charlie and me that had we set out with the intention of creating the perfect habitat for purple emperors [butterflies], we would never have achieved the numbers that have spontaneously emerged through rewilding.” This ‘whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ approach is refreshing. The possibilities of ecosystem wide approaches are inspiring, scientifically sound and encouraging at a time when some conservationists are warning about the need to consider global nature reserves as megazoos that require intensive efforts to preserve specific megafauna species.
There were two surprising Canadian connections. The first was the tidbit that the Canadian 3rd Division was stationed at Knepp Castle during World War Two. The second was the shout out to the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, a conservation effort to link patches of wilderness at a landscape scale to enhance conservation. I’ve written more about the Y2Y initiative and its impacts on animal health here.
No book is perfect, and Wilding is no exception. At times, it comes across as a touch self-congratulatory. There is also little doubt that the public interest generated from this book will help their ecotourism business. (But reading this book also makes me want to visit to see for myself the transformation!) I was also anticipating a chapter near the end that would offer suggestions to incorporate rewilding into my own sphere of influence but there wasn’t anything along this line on offer. Finally, some of the details of British and European agriculture politics including the array of acronyms were beyond me. But if the narrative holds true, what she and Charlie Burrell have done to their land and the resulting ecological boon is truly remarkable and commendable.
I heartily recommend this book to fellow nature nuts. It is a hopeful message that if humans could just get out of the way, nature could redeem itself, even at small scales.
