If there is one clear message coming from rewilding circles and efforts – on land and sea – it is the joyous message that, given a chance, Nature does not waste time restoring human-damaged ecosystems and bringing back to those rewilded areas some of what we had thought was lost to us for good.
I can’t think of a better message for us to celebrate as spring unfurls in the UK, so the special theme in this issue is dedicated to a celebration of not just rewilding, but the less-known initiative of renaturing too.
We celebrate World Rewilding Day on 20 March. Of course, no rewilding conversation on or off the page would be complete without reference to beavers, and in this issue the environmental landscape artist Gary Cook discusses their recent reintroduction to the North Yorkshire estate Broughton with the owner, Roger Tempest, a man who has been sent death threats for rewilding much of the historic estate’s 3,000 acres to prioritise Nature!
Many of us are now looking for rewilding inspiration even further north, to Scotland, where some 400 years ago beavers were hunted to extinction. Witnessing a beaver-reshaped landscape is literally awesome, and today, after a scientifically monitored reintroduction programme that started in 2008, there is an estimated population of 1,500 animals.
Scotland is currently the most Nature-depleted of the UK’s four nation states. At the end of 2024, The Scottish Rewilding Alliance, a coalition of more than 20 organisations, launched its Rewilding Nation Charter, which calls on the Scottish government to pledge to rewild 30% of its land and sea and declare the country the world’s first Rewilding Nation by 2030.
Just a few months earlier, an organisation called Scotland: The Big Picture hosted a one-day conference in Perth with an inspirational line-up of speakers exploring a range of topics including the reintroduction of the wolf from a Norwegian perspective, and, closer to home, the sighting of killer whales (or orca, to be less dramatic) off the Shetland Islands.
The campaigner Mary Colwell, founder of the charity Curlew Action, kicked off the conference with a moving talk about ecological grief, and Duncan and Maja Pepper, founders of River Revivers, shared their expertise about wilding a river.
The whole event was fantastic, well attended by an intergenerational crowd who between them generated the kind of buzz you wish you could bottle and sell, and above all else was full of passion. It was what every gathering concerned with the welfare of our planet and all who share it should be like, and I salute the organisers, who had chosen the theme, ‘Why not Scotland?’ (You can watch their film of the same title by visiting the organisation’s website, below.)
When it comes to the topic of rewilding there is perhaps much metaphor and symbolism for the current and collective yearning of the human psyche and spirit here too. And if this conference (which is held every two years) were staged again tomorrow, I’d be the first buying my train ticket to get there and support it.
www.scotlandbigpicture.com
www.curlewaction.org
www.riverrevivers.co.uk
@susanresurgence.bsky.social
