The ‘wilderness’ issue has been sharpening its claws in conservation circles in Britain for over 20 years, taking much of its cue from initiatives in Europe focused on large animals (‘mega-fauna’), whether it’s the long-term recovery of European bison (which require significant tracts of woodland bordering rough grasslands) to reversing the declines in wolf, brown bear and Iberian lynx.^[2] This approach has tended to dominate the re-wilding debate, on the basis that an ecosystem that can support large wild herbivores and apex predators will be more naturalistic - and therefore ‘healthy’ – than those habitats that are currently managed for wildlife in a largely agricultural landscape. More recently as steps have taken to rewild parts of Britain, including in southern England, a broader suite of mammals and birds have been the focus of reintroduction schemes, or have – through various means – naturally colonised, including pine marten, European beaver, white stork, chough, and white-tailed sea eagle.  These are beginning to complement conservation grazing mammals, such as longhorn cattle, Tamworth pigs and Konik ponies which are presumed to broadly mimic their wilder ancestors in how they behave and manipulate the landscape.

As people over the past centuries have wiped out predators, and destroyed the habitats upon which our biodiversity depends, an approach that can eventually sustain the full suite of fauna amounts to real conservation gains.  The wider countryside in Britain is largely inhospitable to much of our wildlife, and our nature reserves and designated sites are small, isolated, fragments ill-equipped to stem the downward trends for most species in terms of diversity, distribution and abundance. This is the problem that needs tackling if we are to see the loss of biodiversity halted; there is a growing consensus that larger tracts of land are required for nature, and letting them become wilder is a critical approach to help reverse these declines.

Wilderness could effectively ‘put back’ some of the charismatic beasts we’ve lost, and counter the damage we’ve done to our wildlife in the process.  Proponents of re-wilding also argue that this will strengthen the ecosystem services (for example, floodwater management) that high quality habitats can provide, trigger a new eco-tourism industry based on wildlife watching, and give a new boost to our efforts to ‘reconnect’ people with nature. But what would wilderness look like and mean for London and her environs?

Size matters

Re-wilding towards a fully resilient ecosystem requires a number of key principles, predominantly size and the predominance of natural processes.^[3]  Nature conservation is about managing land to sustain and enhance biodiversity, through interventions such as coppicing, scrub clearance, grazing and removing invasive species. The levels of our intervention follow a spectrum from high intensity, akin to gardening, to – more rarely - non-intervention. Most of the Trust’s conservation work is in the middle of that spectrum, leaning towards the gardening end for sites such as Camley Street Natural Park, but less so in places such as Denham Lock Wood.^[4]  The idea of wilderness is to move towards this other end of that spectrum – to non-intervention – so as to allow natural processes to dominate.  At the extreme it is the withdrawal of total human presence – paths, signage, visitors, etc. – on the land so that nature operates as freely – red in tooth and claw - as it wishes.

This is why most of the re-wilding focus has been in the Scottish uplands and islands where large expanses of (agriculturally) low-productive land are available, and the introduction of predators, such as wolf and lynx, might be useful tools for managing the artificially high numbers of red deer.  Clearly existing land-uses and ownership are hurdles to counter – as have been witnessed in the protracted efforts to re-introduce European beaver into Scotland – but this is where the initial steps are being taken, such as the creation by philanthropist Paul Lister of the 9,300ha Alladale estate in the Highlands, where he has released wild boar and elk and hopes to reintroduce wolves within fenced areas, as well as planting 800,000 native trees.^[5]

Closer to home a vision in the mid-1990s (by Sussex Wildlife Trust officers) to allow the woodlands of West Sussex to revert to a more naturalistic state and expand in certain areas^[6], has resulted in remarkable changes at the 1,400ha Knepp Estate south of Horsham.  Here, the owner Charlie Burrell and his wife Isabella Tree have ripped out the fencing and gates that demarcated the estate’s fields, and allowed free-roaming cattle, ponies, pigs and deer – to create their own landscapes - a mosaic of habitats from grassland and scrub to open-grown trees and wood pasture -in a similar fashion to the herbivores that would have grazed here before people arrived.  At low cost, they also provide income in the form of wild-range organic meat. The changes at Knepp since 2001 have turned it into a breeding hotspot for purple emperor butterflies and turtle dove, as well as supporting 2% of the country’s population of nightingales.  Nevertheless, it hasn’t been without its critics – a problem for some is that it no longer looks a tidy part of the Sussex countryside; a chocolate-box aesthetic still dominates our view of rural Britain.^[7]

Nevertheless, re-wilding isn’t as fanciful as it was once and public support is growing.  A number of European beavers, of unknown origin, had been present on the River Otter in Devon since at least 2010, but when video evidence emerged proving that the beavers had given birth to kits in 2014, Defra planned to trap the colony and transfer them to a zoo, arguing they are an invasive non-native species. A local campaign, led by Devon Wildlife Trust, to support an alternative plan for a five-year trial to monitor the beavers’ effects on the landscape, hit the headlines in 2014.  Defra backed down, and the Trust led the re-introduction trial; the beavers were re-released on the river in March 2015, with three further kits being born that summer.^[8]  Similar reintroductions have taken place by various Wildlife Trusts and other landowners in southern England.

Room for nature to breath

Arguably, re-wilding – or allowing the return of wilderness – is as much a philosophy as a process.  It is about giving nature more room to breathe. It’s about us taking a step back, and giving up control.  Clearly a lot of our wildlife is here because of the way we have managed the land for the past few thousand years.  Much of our conservation activity is mimicking old agricultural practices to maintain a landscape of a bygone era. Bluebell woodlands are a result of intensive management for timber and smallwood that became economically unviable in the mid-19^th century; we arguably conserve them as museums  – but is this enough, and can it be sustained in a changing climate?  Nature’s needs have changed, and perhaps our attitudes need to as well.  We should mimic nature where we need to, and let her do her own thing when we don’t.

A re-wilding of Britain – even if possible at a significant scale – would result in changes to the landscape that are difficult to foresee. About half of our plant and animal species require open space, and many others need forest edges.  Will re-wilding, through the impacts of large herbivores - such as deer, wild boar and konik ponies, if not elk and bison^[9] - and the weather (such as storms, frost, drought), create the necessary conditions? At this stage we don’t know; it is imperative that current re-wilding initiatives monitor this.

So will it happen in London? 

The Trust has long-sought opportunities to take forward re-wilding, but we are constrained by the size and ownership of our land and its environs.  Even on our largest reserves, relaxing our management is not as easy as it seems. We have responsibilities to neighbours, funders and landowners, and the sites’ ecologies are often here due to a consistent approach delivered over decades. If this changes we could lose some of the key biodiversity interest for which they are designated.  This needn’t be a problem in the bigger scheme of things, but we need to be confident why we’d take forward such an approach and how to deal with the likely consequences.

Discussions on the shaping of the Thames Gateway and the All London Green Grid threw up re-wilding ideas – for example in the Colne Valley or the Hainault ridge - although real-life complexities knocked away the idealism of a ‘why not?’ at an early stage.^[10]  Our Living Landscape concept areas certainly set out an ambitious stall, embracing steps towards less-intensive management, for example restoration of meanders and backwaters on the rivers Crane and Wandle.  At a small-scale Woodberry Wetlands demonstrates this; however, if we were to relax management here the open water would mostly disappear under a reedbed; this changes the Wetlands’ value for wildlife, as well as its aesthetic currently enjoyed by visitors. 

Twenty kilometres east of Amsterdam lies the expanse of Oostvaardersplassen, a publicly-owned polder reclaimed from the sea in 1968 and intended for industrial development. The 56km²site remained undeveloped, resulting in the emergence of a wetland area colonised by greylag geese, whose grazing prevented woodland succession and created habitats for a range of rare bird species. From the mid-1980s – as a nature reserve - the managers introduced herds of horses, heck cattle and red deer to diversify the ‘naturalistic grazing’ and these animals gradually ‘de-domesticated’, developing behaviours and creating habitats that were claimed to be analogous with Europe some 12,000 years ago.  Oostvaardersplassen was an focus of the re-wilding debate, in particular on the introductions of wild and semi-wild large herbivores and allowing nature to make its mark, but it hasn’t been without its problems. During a particularly harsh winter in 2005, many animals died of starvation, leading to public outcry against alleged animal cruelty. However, what Oostvaardersplassen still represents – and what I felt when visiting it on a shockingly cold day in 2016 - is a place to study how land can be managed in a wild way; “it serves as the inspiration and catalyst for the proactive ‘development’ of ‘new natures.’”^[11]

Parts of London and the city’s borders, such as Fairlop Plain, Crayford Marshes, the ‘Green Arc’ around Epping, Thames Chase Forest, and land around Ruislip Woods (some of which has been affected by HS2), are worth exploring for ‘new natures’, but we can’t ignore the complicated ownership patterns that usually stop the creation of large enough areas for coherent, healthy re-wilding.  However, wild red, roe, fallow and muntjac deer are now within London. More provocatively, wild boar populations are getting close, in their own way, by rooting through woodlands, they are part of a wilder nature returning to the British countryside after first being hunted to extinction here some 700 years ago.^[12]  And as they inevitably move towards the capital (as they have done in Berlin) – and if we allow them some space - we will encounter a more profound wildness than we have for many years. ^[13] 

Just as excitingly Enfield Council have recently introduced a pair of European beaver into a large enclosure within Forty Hall, part the first large-scale attempt at rewilding in London.^[14]  This is afforesting large tracts of farmland across Enfield Chase, primarily to help address flooding risks downstream in Edmonton, helped by the fact the Council still owns much of the land, and has been able to encourage the tenant farmers to assist with their vision. This will undoubtedly inform how other rewilding schemes might take shape in the years ahead around the greener skirts of the city.

The Rewilding Taskforce has much to do before the end of the summer, primarily to define what rewilding means for London, identify the barriers (land ownership and scale are key), look at where it could take place, identify what species might be candidates to trial for reintroduction, and critically how to resource its delivery and sustain it over time.  I look forward to constructive and spirited discussions with my Taskforce colleagues, and that in time whatever emerges in years to come – white storks in Epping Forest? - provides a real boost for nature’s recovery in London.

I will provide further updates on the Taskforce’s work over 2022.

Mathew Frith

Director of Policy & Research

[1] See: https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/mayor-announces-ambitious-plans-to-rewild-london - the ‘roundtable’ has since become a Taskforce

[2] Starting work in five rewilding areas in 2012, Rewilding Europe now has eight operational areas across Europe, covering a size of in total nearly 2.3 million hectares.

[3] See Rewilding Britain: www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/explore-rewilding/what-is-rewilding/defining-rewilding

[4] Sites such as Hutchinson’s Bank and Totteridge Fields, which are grazed for some time of the year, but also require work on scrub and hedgerows, lie between the two.

[5] See: https://alladale.com/rewilding/

[6] Woodland cover in West Sussex c2019 was 19%, the second highest proportion for any English county after Surrey. English average is 8.2%.

[7] Marvellously documented in Isabella Tree’s book Wilding (2019).

[8] See: www.devonwildlifetrust.org/what-we-do/beavers

[9] See: www.kentwildlifetrust.org.uk/wilderblean

[10] See: https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/environment/parks-green-spaces-and-biodiversity/all-london-green-grid (this is due for review)

[11] Jamie Lorimer & Clemens Driessen (2014), Experiments with the wild at the Oostvaardersplassen, Ecos 35(3/4), BANC.

[12] Original populations thought to be extinct by 13^th century, subsequently reintroduced (many times), and finally extinct by end of 17^th century.

[13] One was reported from Ruislip Golf Course in 2007, and I’ve seen evidence close to our West Kent Golf Course nature reserve in 2019.

[14] See: https://www.capel.ac.uk/news/beavers-are-back-in-london/