Wellbeing

NH’s talking about: Rewilding

It might just save the planet…

Imagine a world where nature was plentiful and everyone had access to lush forests full of thriving wildlife. That’s the dream of the rewilding movement, which is all about restoring nature to the point where it can take care of itself – helping rivers flow freely, native woodland to regenerate and expand, and lost wildlife to return. “There are so many benefits for people and the planet with rewilding,” says Rebecca Wrigley, chief executive of Rewilding Britain, a charity focused on restoring natural ecosystems (rewildingbritain.org.uk). “There’s no hiding from what we’re facing now: climate breakdown that is close to reaching an irreversible tipping point, and loss of wildlife and biodiversity on a scale that threatens all life on earth.”

Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently, you’ll be aware at how alarmingly fast the natural world is diminishing. Just last month a huge study revealed that around 600 plant species have been lost from the wild in the past 250 years – up to 500 times faster than what would be expected to happen naturally – and it’s all down to human activity. It’s clear that something needs to change. Could rewilding save our planet? “Rewilding offers us a genuine lifeline if we get going with it on a large enough scale, and use it as one tool among the other changes we need to make,” says Rebecca.

“Rewilding landscapes such as peat bogs, woodland, heaths and marine habitats (all of which we have in abundance in Britain) has the potential to capture and lock down huge quantities of carbon. They have a significant role to play in helping us to remove and safely store a lot of the climate affecting CO2 in our atmosphere.

“Beyond this, the wider benefits of rewilding are significant. It can help us tackle pollution and clean our air and water, prevent flooding (increasingly important as our climate changes) and restore our degraded soil so that land remains fertile. With more wildlife and more wild landscapes for us all to enjoy and share, rewilding also has the potential to play a significant part in our communal wellbeing.”

So what can you do to get involved? Rebecca explains that anything you can do to protect wildlife and nature is a help. “Having a ‘wild bit’ in your back garden or outdoor space is definitely a great start. Having a compost pile, growing beefriendly plants, steering clear of pesticides and growing plants that birds can feed on are all really useful. There are some good tips on how your outdoor space can support nature on our website.

“However, for rewilding to be really effective it needs to happen at scale on large pieces of land across multiple types of landscape. That’s why we’ve been campaigning to get the UK Government to invest in the restoration of nature via our parliamentary petition.

“If people reading this feel that rewilding is something they’d like to get behind, then signing the petition and letting your MP know that you agree with this call would be a great way to start. And, of course, we’re always keen to have direct support for our work, be that donations, fundraising or even just emails of encouragement!”

Feel like helping to save the planet? Visit rewildingbritain.org.uk