Re-wilding has passed the threshold for public acceptance.

But the Knepp experiment is not rewilding. Everything you say about it Whitewavemark2 shows the extent to which this experiment is carefully managed to ensure a change to a richer more diverse and sustainable landscape.

I think these schemes are admirable and to be encouraged and extended, but what they are doing is not rewilding.

Rewilding is taking an area of land, walking away from it and letting nature take its course, without help or hindrance.

There is a book about Knepp, for anyone who is interested - I've just downloaded the audio version and am looking forward to listening to it.

Wilding by Isabella Tree

M0nica

But the Knepp experiment is not rewilding. Everything you say about it Whitewavemark2 shows the extent to which this experiment is carefully managed to ensure a change to a richer more diverse and sustainable landscape.

I think these schemes are admirable and to be encouraged and extended, but what they are doing is not rewilding.

Rewilding is taking an area of land, walking away from it and letting nature take its course, without help or hindrance.

Well to expect the form of re-wilding that you are describing is never going to happen is it? Unless of course man is exterminated. But that is your definition and not the scientists involved in the project.
Perhaps it would suit you better if it was described as “greater biodiversity”

The scientists involved call it “re-wilding”

It really makes no difference - what they have achieved is remarkable and gives one optimism that our depleted countryside can be regenerated.

I don't know much about it, but I would have thought that just abandoning a piece of land and leaving it to 'go wild' naturally would be hugely less beneficial (and require many many years) than managed rewinding, where active steps are taken to restore the conditions needed to make it a viable and attractive habitat for whatever originally have flourished there?

I’ve read up on Knepp and it is very interesting. They use the term regenerative farming to describe what they are doing. One of their aims is to restore soil health after all the intensive farming using pesticides and fertilisers that has stripped it of nutrients over the last 20 years. As someone who cares about animal welfare and the environment I am all in favour of their approach.

25Avalon

I’ve read up on Knepp and it is very interesting. They use the term regenerative farming to describe what they are doing. One of their aims is to restore soil health after all the intensive farming using pesticides and fertilisers that has stripped it of nutrients over the last 20 years. As someone who cares about animal welfare and the environment I am all in favour of their approach.

We live very close. It is glorious

This time of year you can see the calves being cared for in a crèche by what I think is the head cow, whilst the mothers go off to feed.

Don’t take you dog though?

I couldn't care less what scientists call it. Calling it 'rewilding' is just emotional green wash. Manageing landscape to increase biodiversity, should be able to stand on its own two feet as an admirable and reasonable thing to do.

There is no conflict between man and rewilding. There will be areas where this is quite reasonable. The bomb sites in London after WW2 were classic areas of rewilding.

Oldnproud

I don't know much about it, but I would have thought that just abandoning a piece of land and leaving it to 'go wild' naturally would be hugely less beneficial (and require many many years) than managed rewinding, where active steps are taken to restore the conditions needed to make it a viable and attractive habitat for whatever originally have flourished there?

Well, it could then be taken over by Himalayan Balsam, Russian Vine, Giant Knotweed etc, which is not the aim at all.

These plants are not native to the Brtish Isles so managed rewilding is the only way to bring land back to what it was like many years ago.
Animals would naturally have grazed and kept down some plants to the benefit of others.

I think arguing about the terminology is pointless.

I think arguing about the terminology is pointless

Sorry, Oldnproud that was not meant for you
I am agreeing with you.

Callistemon21

^I think arguing about the terminology is pointless^

Sorry, Oldnproud that was not meant for you
I am agreeing with you.

That's OK, and what you have just said above is exactly what I too imagine would happen to land that was left to go wild without some degree of management.

The term regenerative farming makes much more sense to me then re-wilding. I think the term re-wilding is unhelpful because it's not well defined. Wild is wild, invasive species or not, but if some condition of environmental health is aimed for, then there will have to be some management. Re-establishment of wildflower meadows, for instance, involves some 'cropping' by herbivores, but it is controlled cropping.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202205/medium-300168-573142af-b486-4056-8190-ab4e2e4e3622.jpeg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202205/medium-849820-cd870dfa-d95f-4d48-9f67-8404133081ea.jpeg

I let my garden dictate to me where everything lives I don’t weed much just things I really don’t want taking over but lots of so called weed flowers are really pretty
Last year I had a very poor display of sweet peas in some pots. without doing anything at all the most glorious display have sprung up on the very opposite side of the garden the smell is glorious

'Regenerative Farming' an excellent and precise description. I am all for it.

I have been experimenting with rewilding a portion of my garden, a piece about 30 foot by 20. 25 years ago I stopped cutting the grass regulalry and left it. Initially I did interfere, I stopped it becoming a nettle patch by pulling out all nettles encroaching from elsewhere and I cut it once a year and removed the cut material.

It has been interesting watch the different plants take over, buttercups, then a mix, then those white daisies, now a plant I know as 'Queen Anne's Lace (Daucus carota) has taken over, and it seeds everywhere and is a blankety blank nuisance elsewhere in the garden.

There are various other plants, but two years ago it became uncuttable so now I just leave it. It is not a pretty sight with two years of dead stems, bindweed, and dandelions, but at least it is closer to rewilding than these landscapes managed for diversity.

Callistemon21

Oldnproud

I don't know much about it, but I would have thought that just abandoning a piece of land and leaving it to 'go wild' naturally would be hugely less beneficial (and require many many years) than managed rewinding, where active steps are taken to restore the conditions needed to make it a viable and attractive habitat for whatever originally have flourished there?

Well, it could then be taken over by Himalayan Balsam, Russian Vine, Giant Knotweed etc, which is not the aim at all.

These plants are not native to the Brtish Isles so managed rewilding is the only way to bring land back to what it was like many years ago.
Animals would naturally have grazed and kept down some plants to the benefit of others.

I think arguing about the terminology is pointless.

Yes

This subject was discussed by Monty Don and team last night at Chelsea- Ive put the link below. He got quite animated about it and suggested that the prize winning re-wilded garden wasn't actually a garden at all. A subject to be open to discussion much more he seemed to think.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10859371/Monty-Don-left-puzzled-rewilding-entry-scooped-prize-Chelsea-Flower-Show.html

I actually think that terminology is important. In the UK almost every acre of our land, including much of what we consider 'wilderness' is the result of human interference and management and has been so for thousands of years.

As we now know modern farming methods, not just in the UK, but worldwide, have been major contributors to the problem of global warming and this can only be remedied by major changes in agricultural land management so that our land is farmed to protect our environment and ourselves.

Rewilding and its suggestion that all will be well if we put little pockets of land aside and let it return to nature, will sort everything out is misguided and dangerous.

Government grants that encourage farmers to just put a hedgerow in here and an acre of woodland and a pond on their poorest land and call it 'rewilding', while continuing to use industrial farming methods on the rest of the farm will do little or nothing to make any serious inroads into the damage we have done to our planet and its ecosystems.

My tiny patch of land left to its own devices and called 'rewilding' is very nice, ticks all the environemental boxes, but does b****r all to actually do anything useful, to address the problem of the eco imbalance.

Over 25% of the public now accept re-wilding as a positive common sense and normalised. All this actually means is that they like the idea of 'No Mow May', wildflower meadows, and neglecting corners of their gardens.

They can feel happy and most farmers can hide behind specimen 'rewilding projects' while continuing to grow rape, maize and soya to stuff down cows, which gives them permanent diarrhea but makes them grow fast or growing crops unsustainably with chemical inputs that kill off plants and insects.

What is needed now is not rewilding but proper land management for sustainability and natural diversity and until we are honest about that and use a proper term for it like 'Regenerative Farming, nothing is going to happen to properly address the issue. 'Rewilding', is a nice bit of terminology that sounds nice but is actually used to pull woolover people's eyes to think the enviroment is being changed whaen actually it isn't.

Yes, I saw that, mamma

I did try to "rewild" part of our lawn but it is not easy to manage.
If we allowed natural rewilding here we would end up in a forest, thanks to the squirrel.

Yes rewilding is good for the planet and buying secondhand clothes furniture. I love charity shop clothes.

And switch to vegetarian livestock cows are the number one for damaging immisions Cows produce methane emissions, which accelerate climate change.

Royal Family could rewild land they have been asked.

My garden

Grany

Yes rewilding is good for the planet and buying secondhand clothes furniture. I love charity shop clothes.

And switch to vegetarian livestock cows are the number one for damaging immisions Cows produce methane emissions, which accelerate climate change.

Royal Family could rewild land they have been asked.

Totally wrong. Pasture fed cows actually help fix carbon. It is intensive farmed cows fed on soy etc which are the problem.
Knepp farm with their regenerative system are breeding and keeping cows that are pasture fed and help the environment. So switch to pasture fed or organic meat. You do not need to go vegetarian.

I am a of the movement called 'Pasture for life', a farmer driven movement of farmers who sell only meat reared on pasture throughout their lives. KneppFarm are among their members.

As Avalon so rightly says; cattle raised this way do not produce vast quantities of methane, on the contrary can fix carbon in the sole. James Reebank has written often and persuasively about how cattle reared only on pasture enable us to eat meat that is better for us and the planet. www.ft.com/content/a1e2969f-2c0f-40ba-bc81-71c5263b7775

Royal Family could rewild land they have been asked

You could support the Queen's Green Canopy, the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy if you wanted to ?

My garden is busy rewilding itself at the moment; yours looks very pretty. We've got self-set poppies randomly scattered ariound.I noticed the bees returning to the climbing hydrangea today as it's flowering this year - last year it seemed to have a rest!

I think the Royal family goes in for 'regenerative farming@ Prince Charles is certainly an organic farmer himself and encourages other to do so. as well. As said before, Knepp Farm is not rewilding is it a land managed for sustainable agriculture, mainly cattle.

I’ve just been looking at data produced by the Knepp re-wilding project and found some interesting facts.

They have found that oak saplings do better when “nursed” by brambles - keeping away the foragers like the deer.

It has the biggest population of Purple Emperors in the U.K.
since the annual survey started (every July) the butterfly population has risen year on year. Of course some years prove exceptional because of the weather but the trend is definitely up.

Another interesting study.

The long horns needs very little intervention with regard to parasite infestation. One reason is thought that because of the rise in dung beetle numbers and the way they manage the cattle dung, means that they interrupt the life cycle of the parasite, thus producing a healthier gut. The cows also instinctively know on what to forage and will self medicate quite successfully.

There is masses of such interesting stuff.

From my point of view I love the storks clacking away and the nightingales. This time of year the glow worms are a delight.