This is episode 191, and you're listening to the Conservation and Science podcast,
where we take a deep dive
into topics of ecology, conservation, and human wildlife interactions.
I'm Tommy Serafinski
and I always try my best to bring you diverse perspectives on every story that I cover.
And today we are going back to the topic of rewilding.
There were no episodes specifically dedicated to rewilding,
but now it's a good opportunity because there is a new book out titled
Great Misconceptions Rewilding Myths and Misunderstandings.
Yes, please.
And this is not like a work of one author.
This is actually a collection of 12 essays.
And if you look at the authors, this is really who is who in the rewilding
or at least in nature, in nature communication and nature writing.
And I am pleased to report that many of the authors were already guest
on this podcast Eoghan Daltun, Steve Carver, Ian Carter, Alexander Lees.
There are also many others,
who I'm sure you know, Hugh Webster, Mark Avery, and the list goes on and on.
But today our guest is, yes, one of the contributing authors,
but also an editor and a moving force behind that book, Ian Parsons.
And in this episode, we are going to talk, obviously, about the book.
What was the motivation to write a book, and what was the process
of authors selections and whether any surprises and so on and so on.
But then we talk about three main topics
related to rewilding reintroductions the good, the bad, the ugly.
Community engagement.
How to do proper community engagement.
Do's and don'ts of community engagement and tree planting versus tree regeneration.
So obviously there are chapters in that book related to these three, subjects.
But mind you, this is just our conversation, my conversation with Ian.
So this is not necessarily reflecting what's written in the book.
And to find out what's written in the book on those topics and nine more,
you will need to buy the book.
And speaking about buying the book,
of course, there is a link to buy the book in the description of this show,
or the YouTube video descriptions, or some people call the show notes.
Regardless whether you're listening or watching this podcast or video of this podcast,
you can get there and you will find the link to buy that book.
And why?
By buying that book, you not only get yourself a great book,
but you will also support my work here on this podcast because from each sale
I will get a teensy commission that obviously not gonna affect your price.
So get in there and buy the book.
And if you don't want to buy a book for whatever reason,
or maybe you already have the book but still want to support my work,
you can buy me a coffee, the link to buy me a coffee.com/dummies outdoors is also in a safe
place in the description of this show, so you can support me in either way if you want.
And my, big thank you goes to you regardless whether you buy the book or buy me a coffee.
That's always great, right?
So I think I'm not going to drive this introduction any longer.
You know what to expect in this podcast.
So, without any further ado,
ladies and gentlemen, Ian Parsons and great misconceptions about rewilding.
And. Global.
Capital.
Oh. Ian, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
And we are going to talk about a book that I quite enjoyed.
It is a collection of articles or essays
that are addressing misconceptions and the rewilding.
We spoke about rewilding many times on this podcast.
It was always like, oh, you know, like people
saying this about rewilding or that about rewilding.
And there it is.
There is a book that, you know, takes a systematic approach to all that.
Tell me, what was your motivation?
What inspired you to decide to put together a book like that?
It was, it's born of frustration, really, hearing like, you know,
don't have all these different perspectives and often, very wrong perspectives.
I, I started off, I wrote myself a little paragraph saying along the lines of how
rewilding can be used to generate enthusiasm, but it can also be used to engender fear.
It can be used to celebrate things, but also to,
blame things.
And I came up with the phrase rewilding is used to label and label, conservation.
And just speaking to Chris Baring, who's one of the chapter contributors,
we were chatting away and he was frustrated about what was happening with,
the area where he was living and working, and it just went from there.
And I just thought, I'm going to try and contact a few other people.
And everyone I contacted was coming back saying, this is a great idea.
And it just went from there.
And we're going to dive a little bit deeper into some of those things.
But overall, now once you see the book and you know, it's like behind you,
what is, in your view, the most damaging
or most dangerous misconception of them all?
Oh, that's a very good question. I would say this,
I wouldn't say there's
one particular I just it's just the way the media,
used the word almost as,
almost as a tactic to, to to create a reaction that they want often people use it.
I see it on the news a lot.
The word is used and see on all these different TV programs here on the radio,
and you can tell they don't really understand, you know, the context
they're using the word in. So they just use it to label everything.
And I mean it's a difficult one.
It's a new word.
It, you know, they say in the introduction to the book,
if there's 14 of us that write in the book, if you put us all in a room together
and wouldn't let us out until we came up with an agreed
definition, we'd still be there, because it is one of those words.
It's very hard to define.
I mean, I say that we're, you know, we're singing from the same hymn sheet,
but we're kind of singing different words, perhaps, even though we're all in harmony
together, in our general feeling, it's, you know, there are
there is an official definition of rewilding which I find quite interesting,
quite ironic, because at the end of the day, rewilding is about,
humans stepping back and let nature take control.
And yet we still want to keep it within the strict parameters of what that word means.
I don't think there's one overall misconception that's problematic, because everybody in the,
you know, everyone in the book writes about their own specific,
misconception or myth or misunderstanding.
So, I don't know.
I mean, for me, I guess it's, it's that feeling that humans
still have to be in control and decide the outcomes of what they're doing.
And we have a we have a very, very strong need to always be in control, matter what it is.
And you do see some great examples of supposed rewilding projects
where they actually want the outcome to look like this, rather than allowing
nature to, to, to decide, it will not decide just to let it happen.
You know, there's still oh, actually we want our woodland. We want to not woodland.
Have bluebells and oak trees.
You know, and they try and control it.
And not that it isn't really what rewilding should be about.
It should be about giving, natural processes the range to, to do what they do.
Yeah, it's it's a great observation.
And every time we talk about rewilding, we need to talk about,
like, what their world really means, like you said.
And it's being said that it's actually it is no different than word hunting.
If you take, you know, four hunters
or ten hunters in the room and it's like, what is the word hunting?
There probably have a slightly different definitions as well, except the word is around
for so long that people more instinctively understand.
And even though their understanding might be different,
they're not making a big deal out of that, because the word is there, and it's that
sort of like a social expectation that you know what it means.
And I think that because word rewilding is a new word,
that is a discussion point in itself.
What does it mean? Indeed?
I mean, I mean, I was, speaking to, a distant family relation about this book coming out.
And now, to be fair to Amy, he has no interest in conservation of wildlife.
And he said, oh, isn't that, isn't that when you bring back dead things?
And, you know, people do think that that you're going to be, you know,
extracting DNA from some amber, tree sap somewhere and, and recreating these things.
So there's so many different misconceptions.
And, you know, sure, reintroductions play a big part in rewilding, but they don't have to.
And, you know, we have two chapters on reintroduction in the book,
one of which, is about lynx, and the other one is is sounding
a, you know, a cautious note that we have to we shouldn't invariably see
reintroductions as being, a good thing or being the be all and end all of rewilding.
There's a lot more that we can do before we go down that road.
And we know, without a doubt, later
on in our conversation, we're going to dive a little bit deeper into that specific subject.
But right now I just want to ask you, like, you're an editor and contributor to this book,
how did you go about selecting the author, or was it,
you know, where you were looking on the specific angles,
or do you did you wanted like a cover, like a comprehensive,
you know, a different, different aspects of it or like what what was the process?
What was the thinking of selection?
I wanted to make it as broad as possible because I think for
for anything really to catch on and, and work has to be a broad subject.
So I looked beyond, if you like, the traditional rewilding, topics.
I mean, we, you know, we've I've got plenty of conservationists and,
academics that have participated, but I also wanted to broaden it out into
more untypical, areas.
So I made contact with some of these in urban rewilding, working in London
with an organization called Rewild My Street about how we can tweak our
our own in urban environments to allow natural processes to happen.
I had a very chance conversation with a CEO of a clothing company,
and he just happened to say something to me and I said, oh, I quite like that.
Can I get back to you?
I might, might ask you to help me with a book. I'm thinking of.
And, you know, he's written a chapter on how is it possible to rewild your business.
And I think the takings he's done on it is,
it was fascinating, you know, how sort of building a business
up from the ground level using almost ecological principles,
and building building natural processes and the theories behind natural processes
into how you run a business was I found a very interesting read.
And then I, spoke to Natalie Bennett, who used to be leader of the Green Party in Britain
and is now one of their peers in the House of Lords.
And she jumped at the chance to be able to write a chapter on rewilding politics.
And, you know, moving away from this top down decree, if you like, the way
our political system is to have more of a ground up approach in a similar way
to how ecosystems are actually sort of built in, in nature.
And that was really interesting as well.
And very key for me was to get a farmer on board,
because one of the biggest myths, misconceptions, misunderstandings,
whatever you want to call it, is that rewilding is anti farming.
And as you read through the book, you realize every chapter where farming is mentioned
is saying, we don't want to be rewilding prime agricultural land because it's food producing.
We don't we don't need to be doing that. And it's a it's daft.
The people think that.
But many people, many farmers see the word rewilding just as a threat.
And it can be portrayed as a threat by people with vested interests.
I really wanted to get a farmer on board.
He's written a great chapter.
And, you know, people will say, well, if it's farming, it's not rewilding.
But actually agriculture plays a massive part in our landscapes,
both in Britain and in Ireland.
So if we can build in natural processes and build in a bit of space
for nature, for wildlife, it's going to be a great thing.
And, you know, Chris Richards, the farmer who actually turned out, doesn't live
very far away from me at all.
I mean, literally, as the crow flies 5 or 6 miles away from me.
But I didn't know of him. He didn't know of me.
And yeah, it's he's got a great big beef farm,
and it's a beautiful farm, and he's doing a lot there. And. Yeah.
So I was important.
I had a farmer on board because, you know, farmers do feel worried about this word
and they shouldn't do they should be a word that we all embrace absolute.
And, you know, like, I got to be I got to be, careful here because like, this is the subject
that again, we talked a number of times and I just don't like I just want the people
leave people here is to read the book and not just talk about
everything that is that is in the chapter, but that is one of the things.
And so like I said, it all depends how the word is being used.
And there there are some good arguments.
There's this is never that that simple and so on.
The people who are writing their pieces, their, their articles, did you notice anything,
any contradictions or any points that you were maybe disagree with?
Like I picked out like some like, oh yeah, and that needs to be rewilding
must be economically, economically viable.
And I guess among other authors,
because some of them were on their podcast,
actually, quite a few were on their podcast before.
I know that some of them would disagree with like, oh, it has to be.
But there was like just one point of view.
So what are your thoughts, I suppose is my question.
This slight disagreements, many slight tensions, like if you
if you're reading chapters, you go like, well, what this you know,
how does that work with what the what the other person said in the other chapter?
Well, firstly, I think it's really healthy
because, you know, things have to be talked about and debated and discussed.
And, you know, like I said, we've all got our own
independent, opinions on what rewilding is, what it should be.
When I was putting the book together, I everybody knew who else was contributing.
And they need a subject.
They were they were doing, but I kept I didn't allow them to share the pieces
because I didn't want them to be a homogenized, book, you know?
Oh, exactly.
Following on, I wanted
I wanted to show that, you know, rewilding itself can be a huge, diverse thing.
And therefore, I wanted the book to be independent and diverse about it.
And, you know, for a long time, I was the only person who had read all of the chapters.
And it's been really interesting being a, you know, the book's now out and every chapter
contributors got a copy and now they're reading what other people have written.
And I've had really positive, feedback.
There's a lot of common ground,
you know, you read through it and there's a lot of repeated common
ground throughout throughout the book.
How, you know, we all are thinking the same things.
But yeah, they're all, you know, they're all disagreements.
I mean, Steve Carver's chapter, talking about, is you know, using the author's phrase
that Britain's too small and overcrowded in Ireland for the basis of his, his chapter.
You know, he does say that rewilding isn't applicable to,
urban areas, to farming, to forestry, anything that's an extractive land use.
But then, you know, a chapter later, you've got, Sean Moxon of Rewild,
my street talking about how rewilding should be applied to urban areas.
But that's good.
You know, I wanted this book to inform people of different,
different aspects, and I wanted to make them think.
And I think sometimes a book, you know, for books, a very homogenized book,
it can be picked up and put down, but you tend to remember where it is.
Oh, hang on a second. And, and that's good.
And it provokes for thought and it provokes, you know, debate.
And that's what's needed, I think.
I mean, I think we do need to talk about things and how we can rewire
everything within our lives.
I mean, I say about the most important thing in my mind, the most important space to rewild
is the one between my ears because we need to rewild our our mindset.
I mean, he Webster in his chapter talks about there needs to be attitudinal shifts and we do.
We need to rewild our attitude and think, okay, how I'm having to do this
in my life, in my line of work, how can I do it better?
From a from a natural processes point of view?
And, you know, then with some people that say, well, that's not rewilding, but
we, we humans dominate this planet so much that if we can rewild our own attitude
and surely it's got to be better for everything.
Yeah. For sure. And look, I agree with you.
Like you said, that this is healthy and especially in light of the discussion
that we had on the top of the show, that, you know, every word, every definition
have different, different tastes, do it, are different flavors, do it.
And so especially when we dealing with with a word
and with misconceptions about the word, I think this is, like you said, healthy
to tease out all those differences and lay them bare for people to read.
That is like, okay, you know,
because I think to some extent readers will need to develop their own
definition of rewilding, their own understanding of rewilding,
while knowing, like, what are the misconceptions?
Where what what what it isn't.
Ian, where are you?
When you were editing everything,
putting everything together, and you were the first person
to have everything in front of you, were there any surprises?
Were there any observations and the surprises that that you had when you were looking at it?
I was just really pleased to think that how I mean, some of the contributors are people
that I didn't know until I cheekily sent them an email asking them to, contribute.
I was just really pleased how everything came together and how there is,
I think this flow through the book and, you know, yeah, there's this slight,
slight differences in how have each person feels about other things,
but the general consensus is there not and I just yeah, I just I think it works.
And you know, it's like I say I was
I was really pleased to be able to include, you know, a farmer,
a politician, a business person and have their perspective into it.
And, you know,
I did wonder how that was going to work, but I trusted them to just to write it
and give it to me.
And I didn't have to change. I didn't have to change anything.
I didn't have to go back to anybody and say, you know, I want this to be more like this.
I, I didn't need to do that. And that was brilliant.
I was it was, it was a relief.
But also it it made my life much easier.
But it but it just showed that we're all there.
We're all thinking of similar things, just maybe from slightly different angles.
Yes, yes, for sure.
And folks,
if you're if you're already interested with the book
and you should, because it's a great book, the link is in the description of this show.
I just want to throw it in there right now.
So it's going there.
Click the link and buy the book.
It's really worth reading. Ian.
If we had to take that conversation in one of three ways
now and talk about either community involvement or species reintroduction
or tree planting versus regeneration, which one would you pick as the first one?
Well, I would go for the trees because that's that was my chapter.
And, you know, trees are a, a big part of my, my life really.
Is your view on this changed in any way since you, since you wrote the book?
Since the book was published?
I don't think so.
I think I it's something I've always strongly felt.
I mean, I can remember back to the last,
but not the last election in Britain, but the one before that in 2019.
And you had the leader of every political party trying to outdo the next one
by saying how many millions of trees they were going to plant.
And it it just seemed to me to be ridiculous because
everyone is against
this misconception has built up that the best thing we can do is plant trees.
You know, that's rewilding, which it isn't, because we're planting the trees.
You know, we don't need to plant trees.
We can let nature just go ahead.
And, you know, one of those first conversations I had with Chris Baring was when,
you know, he was seeing what he was going through with his local council
that we just basically stripping down scrub, spraying any regrowth
and then planting trees and in its place and calling that a rewilding project.
And it's, you know, we shouldn't be doing that.
And then I went to my local shop and they had a stand up there.
It was, I won't name
the organization, but it's a conservation organization, a non-government one.
And they were talking about,
they were raising funds for a great big tree planting rewilding project.
And I said, but that's that's a forestation.
It's not rewilding.
Oh, no, no, no, I mean, you know, to be fair, the person didn't know me.
I did regret the conversation. I think,
and he was telling me they had to because there's no way that trees will grow there.
And it's it's kind of I just find that very odd because you're saying there's no way trees
will grow there.
So the solution is to put trees in the ground to grow their,
you know, trees don't need us, trees don't need us.
And and if they wouldn't grow, they're like, why?
Why are you putting them where they wouldn't grow? Like, it. Doesn't make sense, does it?
And the the biggest natural process I think that people always forget is time.
Time is a natural process.
And we seem to well, we are now of the of the age where we want everything instantly
and we want to, you know, make a click and have our shopping coming straight away.
Nature doesn't work like that.
And yes, there will be some sites where, it may take a bit of time for trees to develop,
but allow the natural process of time and those trees will come.
And we shouldn't be scared of time.
We shouldn't be scared of allowing that to happen.
We've also built into our mentality that, you need trees.
If you don't have trees, you won't have carbon, sequestering, sequestering from the sky,
from the atmosphere.
But all trees are plants.
There's nothing, unique about a tree.
There's no one definition of what a tree is.
In fact, technically, there's no such thing as a tree.
They're just a massive, disparate group of plants.
And, you know, allowing scrub, allowing,
you know, basis plants to develop is still storing carbon.
They're all plants at the end of the day.
And we seem to be this image that a trees is the one thing we have to have
to, defeat global warming when reality is the thing we need to defeat.
Global warming is us changing our way of life.
Yeah.
But so.
Yeah, it says grasslands that all it all absorbs massive amounts of carbon.
So. Yeah. You do. There is this.
I was watching so many news programs about how various organizations
were launching a rewilding project, which meant cutting down trees
to make wooden stakes, to then stake a plastic tube to in a tree in,
And the other thing that no one ever talks about
is the is the environmental cost of intensive tree nurseries.
If you go on to, if you look up, a large scale tree nursery in this half
a dozen in Britain, and then you actually go on to Google and look from,
you know, the satellite image of the site.
It's not a pretty forest glade.
It's a proper, intensively run production site with,
you know, there's all sorts of, you know, of carbon costs going into that.
We don't need to do it.
We just need to control grazing.
Stop grazing will control it.
Stop mowing and streaming and tying and trees will do their job.
Now, I would like you to for people who are maybe new to that topic or, you know,
that part kind of, you know, because they say, well, you know, what do you mean?
Like why it's not better to have the results quicker and fund them.
And if you you can you don't have to plant them uniformly.
You can just mimic how you going to plant them.
So if you can give like a basic one and one why you think
that fundamentally allowing natural regeneration is way better than planting?
As I said, trees are just plants, and anyone who does any gardening knows
that certain plants in their garden do better in certain areas that they garden,
and some plants just don't grow very well at all.
And the best, for trees is exactly the same.
So I worked in forestry for 20 years, and when I,
started off, I worked on the very sandy soils of East Anglia.
And there you couldn't grow a tree called Sitka spruce for love nor money.
Yet it's probably Britain's most numerous tree by number.
It's the big forestry crop.
But it wouldn't grow there and you wouldn't try and grow it there.
So you by by letting nature decide what it's going to appear.
It's the best tree for that particular spot we can think we know,
but that's all we're doing.
We're guessing, trees don't exist in isolation.
The the world wide Web, if you like.
Is nothing new.
There's the world woodland web of fungal mycorrhizal,
under the soils that's connects all the tree roots.
Trees connect each other up, they take nutrients, the fungi helps protect them.
It's an amazing thing.
But if you stick a tree bare root that's already maybe 18
months, two, three years old, it's never developed that those connections,
whilst the tree that germinates in that soil is straight away connected into it.
And it's a and it builds up protection.
It's more drought resistant.
A lot of these planting schemes, if you revisit them after
after a couple of weeks of dry period, the trees are dying.
They've been drying out.
When they were transported to the site, they've been literally plonked into the ground
and they've had no chance to connect to the to the water, to to the fungi.
And they suffer.
And it's it's just not a it's not a very environmentally friendly way of doing things.
But it's not it doesn't make sense if you're trying to create a natural woodland,
you shouldn't need to create it other than fence off the area.
If you're planting a woodland and planting a woodland, planting
trees is a great thing to do. Don't you know?
Don't get me wrong, tree planting is fantastic.
But it isn't about creating natural woodland.
What you're creating is is a for is a forestry plantation, if you like.
We always think of afforestation as referring to conifers,
but afforestation is about us planting trees to create a woodland.
It doesn't have to be a conifer tree, can be can be any any species of tree.
These organizations that sort of try and tout the fact that we need to be planting
trees for rewilding.
I don't like the word afforestation,
and you get them coming up with things like naturalistic planting.
You mentioned bring one I want a minute ago.
You know, to use Orwellian language.
Naturalistic is a is a brilliant, big brother Hualien
word, you know, Newspeak word from the Ministry of Truth.
It's right.
You can tell that something's off when someone is like it with some of these,
like, making up the word or just, like, using, like, so, like something's is not right.
You see, like a red flag straight away. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I also to say.
That I've had people say to me, you know, oh no, it's naturalistic planting.
What does that mean? I mean, it's just a nonsense word.
No. And it's an excellent point, you know, and,
but it's it's sort of like a with the reintroduction of species,
which is not something I want to go in there right now, but but I read the book when,
when the, when those animals, you take them from one habitat, one place
and you move them in a crate in some other place
and you cut them loose and you expect them doing
well there and with trees is the same thing, right?
Or is like,
you know, you take a human being and you, you know, from England
and you put them in Finland or in Pakistan and it's like, yeah, no,
go ahead and like they're not going to do as well.
Or at least it will take much, much more time.
And they never going to be connected to the culture.
They never be,
you know, they're, they're, they're gods and never going to tolerate certain foods.
Exactly. That's a good analogy. It's a good analogy.
I mean, you know, it's a it's about acclimatization.
And, you know, the best way for a tree
to be acclimatize to a site is for it to germinate on that site.
And so we like okay, maybe I just don't want to assume certain things.
So can you give like another, you know, like a short version of why
scrubland, why the weather developing scrub is important.
And maybe then from that can you just go and explain or maybe give your ideas
how to talk to people about how to get them, accept the mass.
They're not manicured, you know, mowed lawns and all that, but they're oh, look at this.
What it is like. Right. So can you just explain?
Because I think that,
I'm asking like two questions in one because I think they're kind of connecting.
I mean, scrub is a glorious tangle with of of mass, really.
It's fantastic.
We're very tidy minded as a, as a nation in Britain.
I'm certain you probably are in Ireland as well.
And we need to let go a little bit on that scrub is nature's tree tubes.
So when we see these tree tubes, the plastic tree tubes, that's what scrub is.
But it's not made of plastic.
It's natural.
And it's, it's it's an important stage in the woodlands life.
The we know over certainly where I am in Devon, if you leave a bit of of grassland to go,
it's going to be brambles that start coming in brambles and blackthorn,
both of which are very spiny.
And that, that's protecting that.
They're doing that to protect themselves from browsing.
But because of that,
anything that's germinating within that tangle of spines is also protected.
And that's where you woodland is born, and it starts to go through and eventually
the bramble gets shaded out and it loses out to the, to the woodland coming on.
So scrub is important because it is, a tree tube.
Effectively, it's nature's tree tube.
It protects plants from browsing
and it stops them being bitten off, stops any damage, you know, and allows them to grow.
It allows them to get bigger.
So that's that's why scrub so important.
That's also like an important habitat as well. Right.
For those I mean for.
Seed. For wildlife, it's fantastic.
I used to do a lot of work with dormice.
And you know, you get dormice in very brambles scrub.
You know, people always associate dormice with hazel.
They don't need hazel.
It's just that they,
they eat, hazelnuts in a distinctive way, which allows us to survey for them.
But they don't need Hazel, and they love interconnect.
They love interconnected arboreal connections, you know,
they don't like going on the ground to scrubs.
Fantastic form because they can move around for birds nesting,
you know, I mean, I spend a lot of time in Extremadura, in central Spain,
and the nightingales in the scrub, there are just it's just beautiful.
And, you know, if you don't have scrub, you won't have the nightingales.
They, they, you know, they like that messy tangle to exist in.
And so many species do. It's a very, very important habitat.
It also as well as protecting the trees from browsing, it's creating a microclimate.
It protects them from hard frosts.
It stops the ground drying out around them.
If, if, if I can remember when we used to have sunny weather,
if we have, hot, dry periods, those trees that are growing in amongst
the scrub are much better protected.
And they would be if they're just in a plonked in an open field.
So scrubs are vitally important thing for not just the trees, but as you rightly said,
as a habitat for so many species, it can get messy and that can be a problem.
People have this this perception of the countryside wanting it to be orderly and neat.
And you do hear, councils,
you know, justifying
the actions they've taken with their streamers and brush cutters and,
herbicides to say, oh, well, people were thinking
it was a mess and therefore the council aren't doing anything.
And I accept that is a perception.
But my argument to that would be from the to the council would be when instead
of spending the money on tidying it up to meet that their, perception go out there,
spend the money on educating them, speaking to them, communicating
with your council tax payers and telling them exactly what you're doing.
You know, when people see scrub and they see it as a mess,
they're not seeing the wood from the trees.
And ironically, when they go out and they see a geometric cubed,
brand new forest inside, they're not seeing that.
They're not they're seeing trees.
I'm thinking they've got a wood and they haven't, you know, it's
woodlands.
Nature is messy.
And scrub is, is a glorious tangle.
And I have spent so many, so many hours, so many days of my life
getting ripped to shreds, trying to trying to walk through scrub
when I was working for the, you know, as a ranger.
But it as from wildlife point of view, it's it's a very, very important habitat.
I agree with your point of spending money on, explaining to people.
Kind of like a changing perceptions, right?
You know, we can we can, we can say, like educating them because that's what it is.
But then again,
people probably don't like to hear that they need to be educated on something.
But but that's that's what it, what it boils down to. So,
probably those guys
need to be careful to not say, there goes the education program for you, because.
Yeah, yeah, it's you create that. It's interpretation, isn't it?
I mean, when I was at college a long time ago now, we had a big section of,
you know, we were doing countryside management, but a big section of our course
was about interpretation, about how you can engage with the uses
of the land, with the public in the area and, and get them on board.
And I don't know, we seem to have lost that art of,
of interpretation of, of, of getting messages across without it
sounding as if you are dictating to them what's going to happen.
You know, and Chris sparing in his chapter when he's talking about community involvement,
you know, and the project that started off so well,
how suddenly when that community engagement was stopped, it turned sour.
And you've got to be very careful of that. But interpretation,
discussing what you're wanting and talking to the public
and finding out what they feel and their views is important because they've got, you know,
the public have got misconceptions just as anyone else have about things.
And it's about it's about bringing people on board,
allowing them to and, you know, allowing people to enjoy the wonder of scrub.
That's what you need to do.
You see, that's that's for sure.
And that, that is a community involvement element.
We get to that, we get to community involvement.
But I just want to first get into this species reintroduction because that is something that,
that I, I recorded even a solo episode on the species reintroduction,
giving to the listeners my thoughts on on species reintroduction.
And obviously it's a topic I thought about a lot and I spoke on their
podcast a lot.
Tell me your view on like how to how we should determine
whether a species
reintroduction is a good idea or whether it's a not so good idea.
Nice, easy question to start. And,
it's something that you need to look at whether,
you know, it needs to be looked at carefully and there needs to be balance.
It's very easy to make a mistake,
and it could be a mistake that would have made a repercussions.
As your listeners would know, in Britain now there are, beavers on many sites,
and the first wild beavers to call them that, that appeared were not very far away from where
I am now in East Devon, on on a river system that I grew up enjoying as a kid.
And all of a sudden these beavers appeared.
Now, as it happened, that's turned out very successfully.
But there was also a very high risk that they could, have a tapeworm and very nasty
parasite that would be spread to people's dogs and potentially even to humans.
And because it was all done unofficially in clandestine,
in a clandestine manner in and in fact, an illegal manner,
that risk was very, very, was very, very prevalent in people's minds.
And if those animals had had that tapeworm and if that tapeworm had killed people's dogs,
maybe made people ill, the damage that would have done to any future
beaver reintroduction project in this country would have been what we then did it.
It was complete the end of it, because that would the media would have gone to town.
These, you know, beavers are killing dogs. Children are getting ill.
You can imagine it. You can imagine what the media and I.
And that was a risk that somebody took.
And as it happened, it worked out.
But things have to be done carefully.
And again, it's, about how you involve people rather than someone
just doing something on their bits of land because they think their bit of land needs.
This is a much wider picture because nature doesn't respect boundaries.
You know, we only have to look what's happening now.
We've got field fairs and Red wings coming from,
you know, from Scandinavia, from Russia flying in to feed on berries.
They don't understand boundaries.
So if you're releasing something
on, you know, onto land, unless you can offense it in, it's going to spread
and that's going to have, you know, impacts and implications with people.
So you have to really, things have to be thought about thoroughly.
You know, the,
the chapter, the Ian Carter and Alexander Lee's right on species reintroductions
advocates reintroductions being a good tool, but it's a tool that has to be used properly.
And we mustn't see it as being the the instant go to,
method for rewilding if we can create habitats.
I mean, there's been talk of rewilding, of reintroducing birds like Dalmatian pelican.
But if we created a network of wetland sites
across Europe, from the Danube, across the Britain, they will come back.
And, you know, we only have to look how wetland birds have done
really well in Britain in the last 20 years.
You egrets the different types of herons that, because of conservation work
getting the habitat right, have been able to to come back and are now breeding.
We've had purple herons breeding in the southwest.
You know the these great egrets are now very common.
I mean, I can remember 30 years ago the egrets were,
you know, a real rarity, and now people don't even second look at them
and they've come about naturally
because we've actually given them the space that they can move into.
And for a lot of species, that's all they all they need.
Sometimes we like to jump the gun a bit and help them.
Now, for some species,
that help is needed.
You know, if Hugh Webster in his chapter talks about is there space for Lynx in Scotland?
Because people don't think there is.
But you know, he he totally dismantles that theory and shows very clearly that there's
there's plenty of space for Lynx in Scotland, but Lynx aren't going to get here on their own.
They're going to have to be reintroduced.
And, you know, personally, I love the idea of seeing,
of knowing this lynx in an area where I am, if you go to areas in Europe
where there's lynx, you're very, very unlikely to see one, very unlikely to see one.
But just knowing that you're in that spot is I know it's a great feeling.
It's a bit of a buzz.
And then, of course, there's the wolf.
And that's the again, people,
when they talk about rewilding this country,
think about we're going to have wolves running around,
you know, the local play park and the rest of it,
I mean, it should be pointed out straight away
that Wolf should be in Britain and they should be in Ireland. It's
only because of humans that they're not there because they were exterminated by humans.
So they actually do belong here.
I think the reality of it now, though, is that wolf
reintroduction into Britain and Ireland isn't going to happen.
No, I don't see it happening in my lifetime.
It'd be great if I'm proved wrong.
But Lynx, I think, you know, should be, They should be back.
Wolf comes with so much cultural baggage.
Mainly woke, Disney inspired,
but it comes with so much cultural baggage that I just can't see that getting through.
But we can, you know,
we can show the careful management and careful reintroduction of lynx could work.
And that might, you know, might make people think a bit harder about Wolf, I don't know.
Yeah. That wolves are a special in that regard.
You know, like I like every episode that is about
wolves are doing like great numbers because people just like flocking on both sides
and listen like, what's this, what's the deal.
And but and I may I mean, you know, I like I say
I spend a lot of time in central Spain and, you know, I can remember one,
we been out for a meal and we went, went to the edge of this little mountain village,
and we just stood there in the pitch black, listening to wolves howling and
it's just just mind blowing and primal.
Amazing experience.
Yeah.
And, you know,
and then the next day, walking through the area
where we'd heard these wolves howling, not seeing any sign of wolves,
but just knowing that this was an area was wolf was just wow, what a feeling.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And, you know, like, this is, I guess, one of the one of the missing conceptions
that a lot of people think that rewilding means,
you know, you're going to bring back wolves or you want to bring wolves back, right?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so. Yeah, I mean, people do they think. Yeah.
Well we're going to have Wolf and Brown Bear and you know, and, and,
and our children are going to be eaten and all this nonsense. Yeah.
I always, I always say that it's a werewolf. They missed this. They.
Yeah, yeah. The species that different species. Yeah. And they
yeah.
Possibly a subspecies but yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Ian, tell me one of the things that is interesting and it's especially from
the perspective of talks about reintroduction or restoration, like I prefer,
term restoration of links in into Ireland,
which is, by the way, just for the record, for people getting angry right now
at me, it's not going to happen anytime soon because we just don't have a habitat.
And Ireland habitat connectivity.
There is there was a research done on this proper scientific research that there's
there's a lot of work required for habitat before link.
But one of the issues in Ireland with links but also with wild boar,
which a substantial portion of people, you know, in the now
me including like not that I'm in the know but I'm one of the speak there is
there's absolutely no doubt there were wild boar in Ireland, but then there is no record.
There is only like cultural record or names of places or maybe people
who came, you know, that name, the place after the other place that they knew.
And that doesn't mean that there is like were links ever in Ireland where they found
one bone somewhere, but then again, they nobody could be looked for them.
Right?
It's not like they dug up the whole Ireland that links bone and it just happens.
They found one bone.
What's your views on using historical evidence, fossils
or, you know, any sort of, you know, looking for evidence as a.
As a basis for reinforcing a base?
Thank you.
As a basis for reintroduction, whether it is reintroduction
based on, you know, taking that animal in a crate
and moving on, or maybe, you know, reintroduction in it says like,
are we going to work on the habitat, and etc., etc.
to kind of like encourage those animals to come back.
I think you got to be very careful because humans have been manipulating
the landscape and the species within it for so long.
Go back to trees again because it's a subject I like.
We talk about English.
Elm and elms were a massive feature of our landscape, but they're not native.
Me. Yeah.
Which elm is native, but the English elm and all.
It's all it's different names such as Cambridge Elm, Huntingdon Elm,
they're all basically Field elm. And it's from southern Europe.
And they were most likely, introduced by the Romans.
But people don't realize that
because they were such a part of their life and therefore they think it should be there.
So we've got to be very careful how we judge things,
because humans have been moving stuff around for a very long time,
and historical records are okay,
but that's often just one person's perception of something.
And I guess you're probably probably thinking about white storks.
In Britain or one. Yeah. And,
there's been
a white stork introduction project, should we call it that?
In southern England.
And again, it's a bit superfluous because white storks, like other wetland birds,
are moving north anyway, and the likelihood is they would turn up and colonize Britain.
But that that just justifying the introduction project on the one
a 15th century record of a nest in Edinburgh.
Now, we don't know who who recorded that record.
We've got no idea.
And and it makes me laugh in a way, because when I was working for the Forestry
Commission, the British government's Forestry department, as a ranger,
we would receive letters telling us what people had seen in the forest.
Now, in 4 or 500 years time, those records would still exist, and therefore there could be
a podcast in 4 or 500 years time, people talking about reintroducing Lions, panthers,
Wolverines and even a
Jabberwocky because that is what I have had recorded,
and sent to me as a letter from people who were convinced that that is what they can sing.
I was going to ask you, were there any any Bigfoot or Sasquatch?
No, no.
There was one that they even drew a picture,
and said the only thing they can put it near to is the Jabberwocky.
Now, that record, I, of course, had to send a letter back thanking them for their record
we would be placing on file, but there's no common on that record on that file.
If that file survives for 3 or 400 years,
someone could find that and say, oh my God, they had this creature.
So you got to be, you know, and I know that's being a little bit flippant,
but that is a record that is somewhere in a government filing system.
Likewise with herds of black panthers, which are actually mechanistic fallow deer.
But again,
you know, that's what people thought they saw and they've recorded
and we've got no way of checking the verification of a record
from the 15th century when, by the way, we still believed in witches.
And that was
there's plenty of records of witches from that time,
and we don't think that we should reintroduce them.
So we've got to be very careful about looking at an isolated historical record
and taking it as hard fact, because it could just be plain wrong what?
A person could have been drinking too much mead.
Ian, I'm up for reintroducing witches.
That would be,
Can you imagine the media?
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Listen, there is a there's a one thing I gotta ask you about.
And if if I may, that would be probably just a teensy, teensy criticism,
although it's not evenly criticism because the book is about something else.
But what I was missing is
and and again, it's probably out of scope of the book.
That's why it's not there.
But the subject that interests me
is there's the novel ecosystems there, probably a chapter about the cities
is the closer closest to dealing with the subject of novel ecosystems. And,
you know, accepting species that are non-native.
And and this is not really like a specific question
regarding the book, but more of your, views and the discussion point on,
you know, to what extent rewilding is compatible with the view.
Like, okay, we move, we need to move forward from the point where we are right now
because in fairness, in, you know, if we if we leave this space and already
within that space and within the vicinity, we have non-native deer,
non-native trees and so on, then they are naturalized native.
So that creates that novel ecosystems.
And I'm just going to
prefix
that or caveat that from one of the previous episodes dedicated to novels.
Ecosystems are that equally can be dangerous term
because you can destroy a piece of habitat and then you say like, oh,
it's a novel ecosystem that's not destroyed at all. Right.
So there is a as was we everything there is a there is a balance.
But I'm curious your views, how to balance.
Maybe that's a question like how to balance of like, okay,
we need to work towards restoration or economies are colonization.
Look what was there.
Allow these processes, you know, control grazing control, browsing deer, this and that.
And to what extent is like yeah the we truly which is leaving leaving it off.
And if we have, you know, a parakeets or whatever what have you, that's fine.
That's a rewilding that creates that novel ecosystem rather than, you know, Holocene
baseline, which is, which is recommended on the book or place, the scene baseline,
which is also something that I, you know, heard and covered on the podcast where you're at.
It's a very difficult one because, again, we because we've had such an impact on,
our own countries with historic reintroductions.
I mean, trees in Britain such as sweet chestnut, the elms,
they're not native, but they are a massive part of our,
you know, our cultural history as well as our countryside,
brown rat.
As much as people don't like it, it's a huge part of our, of our ecosystems.
But it's certainly not native to Britain or Ireland, so it's a difficult one.
And likewise with drumming, fallow deer in Britain, vast numbers of them.
And I know, in, in Ireland you've got lots of sick deer as well,
and they cause plenty of issues.
We can't reset the clock.
We can't go back in Britain. None of it ever happened.
And, you know, I was in Madrid,
a few years ago now, in one of the Retiro Gardens, the main park.
And there they have parakeets, not the same species,
but they have very colorful, beautiful parakeets.
And to me, I walk through and to me I'm thinking all that just.
Yeah, that the terms plastic, isn't it.
You know, they're just plastic.
But watching young children engaging with these beautifully colored birds
and taking great pleasure in it,
made me think of how I
can remember as a child going to a place called Dawlish, which is in Devon,
and they've got a river that runs through the town,
and there's mandarin ducks and black swans, lots of non-native, species.
And how going there with my gran
and being able to feed, feed them bread, my, you know, engage me with, with,
with what I would think was wildlife and really made me want to,
to see birds and, and, you know, have their involvement with them.
So it's very difficult.
I mean, rotary parakeets in London are everywhere, but they bring joy to people.
There's going to be an ecological impact that they've brought with them.
Well, that they've that comes with them. They didn't bring themselves.
We at the end of the day, it's us as humans that are the reason they're there.
And also if you start talking about going back to the place, the thing,
sort of thing really, we're humans
meant to be here because we colonized, you know, we're from Africa.
So how you know, it's so difficult.
It's very slippery very quickly.
Yeah.
It's very easy
to be black and white about a subject that is impossible to be black and white about.
And, you know, we can't
we're not going to get rid of gray squirrels, for example, from England.
We're not going to get rid of fallow deer from England,
but we're going to have to live with them.
And it's how we do that and how we, you know, how we're able to incorporate
natural ecosystems with non-native species,
but we're never going to be able to reset the clock.
That is, it's far too late for that.
And probably unhelpful as well.
And we cannot be avoiding this subject any longer
because it's very important subject and it's dealt with the book comprehensively.
Local community involvement
absolutely
critical for, well, anything to happen.
But but rewilding projects is one of those things.
What are the what are the best ways to involve community.
Well like, you know, do's and don'ts, community involvement in the rewilding project.
I think the first thing you got to do is accept that because you've got an idea.
It doesn't mean that everyone's going to like that idea.
And if you try and then impose that idea on people without even discussing it with them,
you're just going to create resentment and you're going to make it very,
very difficult for whatever you're proposing to be a success.
Communities are, by their very nature, very varied, and I mean huge differences
in opinions on on everything,
be that how they drink their cups of coffee to their political views, everyone.
Everyone's different.
We're all independently minded people,
and it's very difficult sometimes when you think you know
you've got something that's right and would be very good for an area,
and then you've got people that are being obstructive to your ideas.
But you
you do need to go out there and speak to them
and listen to people and try and get them on board.
And the best way of trying to get them on boards to be involved in from the very start,
you know, say, look, this is what we you know, the Chris Baring chapter talks
about how they, had a packed out village hall,
you know, loads of people there, loads of people really, really keen.
And they asked them, everybody there to come up with their own ideas.
And, it was about an urban area in which people were living in and how things could be done.
And there was a big map
and people were asked to draw on the map, put post-it notes on the map.
And I know Chris found
that an extremely rewarding evening to see what people actually thought
and and the fact that they were broadly their ideas were in line with his.
And a chap called Jonathan Mock, he was part of this project.
And then it was all going so well.
And then all of a sudden, the local authority decided they were going to impose their own
top down view on it and totally alienated the local community wanted.
And that caused the backlash against the word rewilding.
Very quickly.
That was excellent chapter.
It was excellent because they they even didn't call that consultation
because that's another thing.
Like, are you doing consulting, public consultation on the public engagement.
Don't even call that that way.
No, no.
It's very you've got to be very it's difficult subject and it and it's time consuming.
But you need to involve people and yeah.
You know, I can remember
when I first started off as a ranger, you be getting low to school groups out
young young kids coming out into the forest or going, you know, going to country parks.
You don't seem to get that so much now because of costs and and,
you know, schools don't have the budgets to do it,
but you're already losing that connection by not having that.
And then, you know, not every child goes on a school trip to a
to a country park is going to be enamored by what they see.
But it's it's that's where engagement starts, when the, you know, when when children
when you're when you're a child, it's the best way of learning anything.
I mean, you try and learn a foreign language, learn it before you're free
and you'll be fluent and you'll never forget it. But learning it as an adult,
is difficult.
So getting children on board is key.
But again, that's that's resetting the clock.
And if you like going back in time to do that, but certainly involving your local community,
local schools, local groups, having open meetings, trying to discuss with them
what what you want to do and why you want to do it,
and being totally honest about why you want to do it as well is key.
It's and, you know, and when it comes to landowners,
I mean, or in Dalton in his chapter,
the first chapter in the book talks about you can impose things on landowners.
You have to give them the option, and you also have to incense and incentivize it as well.
So if you're talking about land use changes and from farming or,
you know, marginal farming, those farmers exist purely on subsidy.
In many cases, we'll give them a subsidy to do something that's better.
You know, don't just expect them to to stop and have nothing.
You've got to you've got to help people and you've got to give them the option.
And if they don't want to do it, you've got to respect that.
Even though it might be hard for you to accept it.
You know, you do need to listen to people's opinions.
Yeah.
And, you know, like, even like anyone
who is like in their in their day job, in the corporate environment or whatever, you
whatever course, some leadership, you go that any of this is any good,
they're going to tell you you involve people in making the plan.
And then that's their plan.
They're invested in, in in doing what they're planned.
And then this is how you this is how you do those things.
The worst thing you can do as a leader is like, all right, lads, this is how we doing it.
And then everybody's like, oh, I don't know what I can do this like whatever with the plan.
And so that's, Yeah, I guess this is again
plays to human psyche.
And, you know, a reoccurring theme here is like over and over again.
It is it is like squarely social sciences, like ecology, biology.
That stuff is relatively easy.
Like we yeah, we got this covered.
But the social sciences and the and the getting people to, you know,
get them on board and like you said, not alienate them.
Don't be a, you know, asshole to people.
That's a, that's a that's another good advice for, for a rewilding project.
And in general it's the life advice, actually not the real Ian.
What would be your answer to the following?
What you heard surely many times the rewilding is anti rural.
It is fundamentally anti rural.
It's a land abandonment because that's the land that supports community.
And now it's going to be supporting something else rewilding.
Therefore there's no place for community there.
So it's anti rural. What would be your answer to that.
And what my my answer would be to read the first chapter in the book bio.
And Dalton, who you took straight away that you know the his misconception
is that rewilding is land abandonment and it isn't any and it shouldn't be.
And people can get a lot from having nature back in their lives.
And it can also generate income.
It can generate jobs.
People want, you know, if I mean, I've never been to Owen's place,
in southwest Ireland, but from what I understand,
he gets loads of visitors going there to see it, you know, so that
that generates income from look for local businesses.
It's a positive action.
That's it's a misconception that's put about to try and frighten people
that, oh, we're going to rewild this area.
So therefore you're all going to have to move away.
And this is just going to be for wildlife. That's never going to happen.
That's you know, that's that's it's just nonsense.
It's not rural abandonment. It's not disrespecting rural communities.
It's about getting them on board as well and helping, making, making them a life.
And giving them a future as well.
If you look at a lot of marginal hill farming, it's not generating any money for
for the farmers, it's a massive struggle.
They're working horrendous hours in often horrendous conditions.
You only have to look at the suicide rates of,
of, of farmers and the farming community to realize is big issues there.
And I things need to change.
But it's not about alienating them, it's about involving them and maybe
changing changing things slightly, but giving them something positive to grasp
and providing futures and income for them and their, you know, and their children because
a lot,
a lot of these farms now, not these, these marginal hill farms
where, where are they going, you know, where's the future?
There's nothing being provided.
So actually this gives a, an opportunity for,
for these communities to take on board something a bit different.
And yeah, there's going to be, people that don't like change,
but actually it could revitalize the rural economy and really do something,
do something very, very positive for not just the economy, but also for people's lives,
I think. Is it I it's not it's not rural abandon at all.
I think it's a, it can be a very positive thing.
But again, it needs to come with community involvement.
It can't be a top down decision.
You can't suddenly have Defra or the Irish equivalent suddenly saying, right,
we're going to stop paying you for this. You can't do it anymore.
I mean, that should that all that's going to do is cause problems.
It needs to be something that builds, from the from the ground upwards effectively.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, again, much more on that subject is in the, in the book itself.
And folks, once again, reminder you can,
you can click on a link in the description of this show.
Get in there, buy the book.
That's, that's right.
That's the book on here as well.
And and if folks remember, like when you're going to buy the book
using the link in the description, you will support, my work on this show as well.
Ian, do you think that conservation has failed and now we need rewilding?
I wouldn't say it's failed. I think it's it's always struggled.
And I think perhaps for a very long time we focused on postage stamp habitats,
if you like.
I mean, when I was at college, we'd go out to work with the local council
on the local nature reserve, and it would be a tiny island of habitat.
And everything was focused on that.
And because it was so small, so much work had to go into just
maintaining the status quo, not necessarily improving it, just maintaining it.
We need to think bigger.
We need to have, areas of land that are linked in.
You were saying about the links in Ireland, you need that connectivity and that can be done
using very small areas of land, and it doesn't have to be static.
Merritt in his chapter talks about industrial sites near where he lives in
the English Midlands and how we need to accept that change is good and that, yes,
just because a site this year's very good for let's go back to Nightingales again,
it doesn't mean that in 510 years it will be because that site is developing.
But if we allow those sites
to develop a new site to develop, we've always got that continuation of habitat.
And they don't have to be big areas necessarily.
We need links to, to to bigger areas.
We need to have smaller sites that that act as stepping stones for species to move through.
And if we don't have that, if all we're doing is going back to the old way of
of managing our conservation sites as being completely isolated from one another,
it will fail ultimately, because at the end of the day,
the amount of resources that are having to be
put into these small sites just to maintain the status quo,
if for whatever reason they were designated as a, as a as a local nature reserve is not,
you may need to be more holistic in our approach, and we need to think wider.
We need to think bigger than just small nature reserves.
We need to think about the land around it and how they connect in.
And that does mean changing how we live our lives.
As I said at the beginning, the most important space to rewild is the one between our ears.
And if we can do that and then look at a bigger perspective of things
and see the bigger picture, then we can really do something very, very good.
But if we if we go back to that time in the early 90s when I was at college of
just having these small islands, which we had to put lots of intense management
into just to keep it from scrubbing over, or ironically, we were defeating
natural processes, by managing these sites because the sites aren't big enough to allow
natural processes to, to go to work that just that, just not big enough.
So we need to have this interconnectivity of sites
that are changing, that are going to change that,
you know, for one period of time will be very good for something,
and then they'll gradually lose that benefit for those species.
But they will develop benefits for other species.
But in the meantime, other sites are coming on as well.
And if we can do that, and it's a big challenge, but if we can do that,
then we can make conservation a massive success story.
And if you or when you look into your crystal
ball and, you know, let's talk about ten, 50, 100 years time or whichever
timeframe you prefer, what do you see how the concept of rewilding is going to develop?
Is it is it going to be mainstream and no one will be even,
you know, considering any questions? What does it mean?
Or do you think it's always going to be like a special case next to conservation?
What do you see?
Like how do you how do you think, rewilding will be perceived in the future?
I mean, Mark Avery in his chapter, the final chapter looks back from 2048
at what rewilding achieved.
And, you know, it's it's a very good chapter.
Me personally, I,
I think there's
two possibilities is one that it it stays as being a niche subject.
It's something that's talked about a lot.
And there'll be a few projects here and there, but it doesn't really go much further,
I would hope.
It's not that I would hope that we broaden our scope when it comes to rewilding,
and we look at how we live our lives, how we farm, how we run our,
political systems, our communities, our businesses, our planning departments.
We look at how we can incorporate, natural processes into our everyday lives
and how, yes, we can have some great, you know, we could have
upland areas of Britain where there's the space
and not the agricultural pressure on the land to actually do so.
We can have those big areas.
But for it to to actually really, truly work, we need to rewild ourselves and our attitude,
have this attitudinal shift, have our towns, cities,
being much more healthier environments than for not just wildlife, but for us as well,
because if we get it right for wildlife, we're going to get it right for ourselves.
You know, there's been so many studies done and the benefits that people get from exposure
to wildlife,
you know,
even in hospitals recovering from operations, if they're looking out the window in their
seeing greenery, if they're seeing trees, their recovery rates are much better than those
then those that are looking out, seeing industrial units.
All that research has been done. It's there.
We just need to build that into our lives.
And that's I find that very frustrating that we have all these
this tremendous research done and it shows and proves this.
And then it gets completely ignored and it just gets put on a shelf somewhere.
And we've got to be very careful that rewilding doesn't just get put on a shelf somewhere.
You know, we need to we need to make sure that is not a niche subject,
that it actually is incorporated into what we're doing.
And yeah, what there's always going to be people with different opinions.
The people that that contribute to the book won't agree with me on everything that I think
that's wonderful. That's brilliant. That's what democracy is.
We need to broaden rewilding into a mainstream subject and make sure it's not exclusive.
Get people to buy into the concept that rewilding can apply to everything we do.
We just need to think, okay, in my garden, what can I do that would actually
and now allow natural processes to develop, which would have a benefit to me as well.
And you know, people doing that more and more is is dead.
The traction is there.
I mean, you look at no no mow May and you know people really buying
into that concept and that's, that's having a great boost for insects.
And in urban environments we can work on that. We can develop it.
It's it's going to be it's going to take a change in mindset and people
going to have to be brave and be prepared to yeah, let's move forward and let's do it.
But if we try and keep it as a niche subject,
then it will eventually just end up on in a reference book on the shelf.
And that's we don't want that to happen, folks.
Great misconceptions, rewilding myths and misunderstanding.
Edited by Ian Parsons.
Ian, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you very much.
Enjoyed it.
And folks, if you're interested in how to make sure that
scientific evidence gets into, environmental policymaking and influence that,
you need to listen to the next episode of this podcast.
Thank you so much.