Carrie...thank you gor writing this piece! As a lifelong devotee to all sentient beings, most folk would assume im 100% behind rewilding but Ive had many reservations right from the get go. I absolutely want to live in a country (world) that has let nature recover. I also want to live in a country that has strong food systems and respect for where and how that food is produced. We need to eat, and despite being vegetatarian my whole life I respect for some that requires eating livestock. There has been a race to get food as cheap as possible, households spending a tiny proportion of income on food compared to the relatively recent past. Good food enables good health, and with our health system also in crisis it seems to me no one is joining the dots between any of these issues. So often Im drawn back to Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, humans have a role in the grand systems of life on this planet, we are part of the balance and there are many spinning plates to be kept from smashing.
It’s all intertwined isn’t it? I like the “One Health” concept, which recognises that human health, animal health, and environmental health are deeply interconnected. Healthy people need a healthy planet. 🌎
I think there has to be space within the idea of rewinding for regenerative agriculture. Going back to the days of crop rotation, with natural hedgerow dividers, and maintained drainage ditches. Mono crops are ruining the soil, run off from intensive animal rearing is polluting the waterways. There has to be space to change those things, and still rewild. 💜😊
I agree, there’s space for both! This is “land sharing” as opposed to “land sparing” which rewilding favours. Like so many things the polarisation and the either/or is what causes problems and stops progresses.
Fantastically written Carrie! I think you already know my views… Farming and nature recovery can and do go hand in hand, better still most farmers I know (and I know quite a few) want to help, they want clean rivers, they want nature to thrive on their farms, they also want to feed people - it is our jobs to help them achieve it all to benefit all of us!!
I think there are entrenched positions, between the capital of rewilding, and the capital of farming. Here in the Highlands the phrase "repeopling" comes up often alongside rewilding. But it is just a vague idea for now. That could mean first bringing rewilding to where people are. Villages, town and cities. And combining the efforts of community, nature and food. Maybe the interests of capital have too much control on what can be done on farmland yet. And the people on need to be shown what can be, what can be shown to be natural, and no longer seen as risk.
One of the best rewilding models - for now - we see in South Africa where working cattle ranches have been turned back to native wildlife with hosted paying hunters becoming the new economy, the meat going to the native peoples and some to the farmers' coffers as well. Rewilded landscapes should be working landscapes same as the ones they replace. Something to go beyond the mere flaccid voyeurism of the more passive elites.
Of course the downside to this and to all modern conservation in fact is that it is funded by the excesses generated by the selfsame activities that are destroying in ever larger increments the planet elsewhere, in order to keep the growth necessary to funding anything in our model happening. It's all a limited-time stopgap measure at best. A buying of some time, a model doomed to fail at its objectives eventually. Without the growth there is no conservation funding. With it, there is ultimately no planet. It's never been a longterm model.
Carrie...thank you gor writing this piece! As a lifelong devotee to all sentient beings, most folk would assume im 100% behind rewilding but Ive had many reservations right from the get go. I absolutely want to live in a country (world) that has let nature recover. I also want to live in a country that has strong food systems and respect for where and how that food is produced. We need to eat, and despite being vegetatarian my whole life I respect for some that requires eating livestock. There has been a race to get food as cheap as possible, households spending a tiny proportion of income on food compared to the relatively recent past. Good food enables good health, and with our health system also in crisis it seems to me no one is joining the dots between any of these issues. So often Im drawn back to Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, humans have a role in the grand systems of life on this planet, we are part of the balance and there are many spinning plates to be kept from smashing.
It’s all intertwined isn’t it? I like the “One Health” concept, which recognises that human health, animal health, and environmental health are deeply interconnected. Healthy people need a healthy planet. 🌎
I think there has to be space within the idea of rewinding for regenerative agriculture. Going back to the days of crop rotation, with natural hedgerow dividers, and maintained drainage ditches. Mono crops are ruining the soil, run off from intensive animal rearing is polluting the waterways. There has to be space to change those things, and still rewild. 💜😊
I agree, there’s space for both! This is “land sharing” as opposed to “land sparing” which rewilding favours. Like so many things the polarisation and the either/or is what causes problems and stops progresses.
Fantastically written Carrie! I think you already know my views… Farming and nature recovery can and do go hand in hand, better still most farmers I know (and I know quite a few) want to help, they want clean rivers, they want nature to thrive on their farms, they also want to feed people - it is our jobs to help them achieve it all to benefit all of us!!
Yes 100%!
I think there are entrenched positions, between the capital of rewilding, and the capital of farming. Here in the Highlands the phrase "repeopling" comes up often alongside rewilding. But it is just a vague idea for now. That could mean first bringing rewilding to where people are. Villages, town and cities. And combining the efforts of community, nature and food. Maybe the interests of capital have too much control on what can be done on farmland yet. And the people on need to be shown what can be, what can be shown to be natural, and no longer seen as risk.
One of the best rewilding models - for now - we see in South Africa where working cattle ranches have been turned back to native wildlife with hosted paying hunters becoming the new economy, the meat going to the native peoples and some to the farmers' coffers as well. Rewilded landscapes should be working landscapes same as the ones they replace. Something to go beyond the mere flaccid voyeurism of the more passive elites.
Of course the downside to this and to all modern conservation in fact is that it is funded by the excesses generated by the selfsame activities that are destroying in ever larger increments the planet elsewhere, in order to keep the growth necessary to funding anything in our model happening. It's all a limited-time stopgap measure at best. A buying of some time, a model doomed to fail at its objectives eventually. Without the growth there is no conservation funding. With it, there is ultimately no planet. It's never been a longterm model.