Wilding for conservation - British Wildlife

Wilding for conservation: a retrospective

We began our Wilding for Conservation series in 2021 as a means of exploring the phenomenon of rewilding within the UK. Over four years, the series has encompassed 26 articles and now, as it meets its conclusion, we ask whether letting nature take back control or ‘wilding’ constitutes a paradigm shift in UK nature conservation. The full series list can be found here and you can read series editor Rob Fuller’s conclusion here.

As we embarked upon the series, we wanted to explore the diversity of philosophies and practices that exist under the banner of rewilding and to what extent rewilding projects differ from traditional conservation. Since we began, the rewilding movement has continued to evolve and expand, and it will continue to do so as we navigate biodiversity loss and climate instability. Rewilding is now inextricably embedded in conservation discourse and although our series banner will now be retired, the subject itself will continue to feature in British Wildlife into the future.

Wilding in the context of Britain

The tenets of what is now the global rewilding movement were first defined by Soulé and Noss (Wild Earth, 1998) as large, strictly protected core reserves connected with ecological corridors and supported by the reintroduction of ‘keystone’ species, usually carnivores. This doctrine is most famously associated with North America, specifically the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park.

Discourse around rewilding in Britain is often preoccupied by how this distinctly North American approach can be adapted and practiced in Britain, a country with unique social, cultural and ecological conditions and significant spatial limitations. Steve Carver and Ian Convery highlighted the problems and potential for connectivity between rewilding projects in the UK and Hugh Webster offered his thoughts on whether or not the reintroduction of carnivores can really create top-down trophic cascades of ecosystem restoration in a British context. In his comment piece, Tom Williamson contemplated the philosophical limitations of wilding a Britain made up of distinct and complex cultural assemblages of peopled landscapes. And Patrick Barkham asked whether conservation is ready to go wild and to what extent conservation NGOs in the UK are responsive to the galvanising wilding movement.

_{Carrifran Glen ^{© M J Richardson CC BY-SA 2.0}}

Wilding distinct from traditional conservation

Famously described as ‘plastic’ (Jorgenson, 2015), a term that is malleable to the user’s intent, commentators have found rewilding difficult to define. Whilst our series has attempted to avoid unnecessary quibbling over the term itself, several of our contributors have wrestled with the ways in which wilding is a notion distinct from ‘traditional’ conservation. Rob Fuller and James Gilroy and Nathalie Pettorelli and James M. Bullock suggested that traditional approaches like ‘intervention’ and ‘restoration’ can be compatible with wilding. Both pieces indicate that best practice should be considered and actioned on a case-specific basis. Similarly, George Peterken and Keith Kirby have considered the extent to which woodlands could be ‘wilded’ and asked what degree of intervention should be utilised. They used examples of Britain’s long-standing ‘wild’ woodlands and European Strict Forest reserves, respectively.

Articles from Ron Summers and Max Coleman have debated the usefulness of tree-planting as a conservation technique and the extent at which it should be abandoned in favour of natural regeneration. A pervasive question concerning what the desired outcome of conservation (or wilding) is and should be, underpins decisions of when traditional conservation techniques should be undertaken alongside, or be replaced by, ‘wilder’ techniques. This is a question that conservationists and wilders must continue to reckon with.

Precedents for wilding in Britain

Whilst wilding is a relatively new phenomenon, our series has included several historic (and international) precedents that rewilders can build from. In Britain, the closest approximation of what a site rewilded over a long-term period might look like is the New Forest in Hampshire. Jonathan Spencer considered the usefulness of the New Forest as a model for a wilding future. Peterken and Kirby compared long-term studies on the development of new woodlands to explain what we can expect from the field layer of rewilded woods. And, in consideration of invertebrates, Tim Gardiner and Dorothy Casey offered a comparison of how different techniques in ‘wilded’ arable lands impact the abundance of Orthoptera. In a similar analysis of case examples, Graeme Lyons et al. compared examples of where pulse grazing has been implemented to best effect and the consequent benefits for habitat variation and invertebrate diversity.

_{^{© Jim Champion CC BY-SA 2.0}}^{Beech trees in Mallard Wood, New Forest}

Wilding in diverse ecosystems

A wilder future for Britain is dependent upon a wilding ethic implemented across the array of habitats and ecosystems found within the country. Expectedly, wilding in a woodland context has been covered extensively, including Aljos Farjon’s concern for the struggle of oak regeneration when in competition with other trees in southern Britain. Carl Sayer et al. asked how wilding might benefit freshwater habitats in a hopeful call for natural wetland restoration, Graham Weaver asked how wilding philosophies might be applied in the coastal zone and Ian D. Rotherham emphasised the importance of wilding in urban areas.

Forward thinking

Despite the implication of its prefix, ‘re-wilding’ is about the future and not the past. It is essential that conservationists or wilders consider precedents from the past and always use traditional or ‘wilder’ techniques responsively to a given site’s ecological conditions. Several of our contributors have envisioned what a rewilded future might look like.

Jonathan Spencer argued that the combination of environmental and economic thinking is essential if we are to create an ecologically and economically viable future. James Pearce- Higgins called for the incorporation of a climate change responsive ethic into all efforts to mitigate biodiversity loss and Ellie Crane asked whether a wilder approach to woodland management could play a role in battling climate change. Evan Bowen-Jones articulated the view that the reintroduction and pragmatic utilisation of ecosystem engineers, in this example European Bison, is the only viable future Britain in a changing climate. And, Adrian C. Newton asked whether there is a danger that rewilding places too much emphasis on a mosaic, tapestry of open or early successional habitats and not enough emphasis on the creation of wild woodland.

Long-standing and newly emerging organisations will play a significant role in the conservation and wilding of the UK. Norman Dandy asked whether rewilding is compatible with, or has a role to play, in contemporary forest policy and representatives of Rewilding Britain, Sara King and Emma Oldham described the ‘kaleidoscope’ of experimental approaches to rewilding that they hope will pave the way to a wilder Britain.

Successful wilding involves the support of a number of stakeholders, Benedict Dempsey suggested that a ‘spectrum-based approach’ may help to depolarise rewilding in farming, or other perceptibly resistant, communities.

We hope the series has made a valuable contribution to the discourse surrounding rewilding in the UK and believe that conversations concerning all of its facets must continue if we are to collectively ensure a resilient future for nature.

Stay tuned as a full compilation of the series, Wilding for conservation: an exploration of rewilding in Britain, will be published later in 2025. Further details will be announced in British Wildlife in the autumn.