Requiem for rewilding

 

Rewilding had been my one big hope when I set out nearly 20 years ago on this advocacy of separating wild nature from farming. However, the endless reframing of rewilding by those willfully ignorant of its origins has become acutely unbearable - these reframers are blindly standing on the shoulders of giants – and I just can’t take the disappointment of seeing rewilding being damaged any more

We came across an area of publicly accessible ancient woodland last year that had no footpaths. It was part of Forestry England’s Sneaton Forest, a popular destination south of Whitby for its attraction of Falling Foss waterfall (1). Little Beck separates the areas of ancient woodland in the northern section of the Forest, with footpaths on the eastern side, but none in Great Wood on the western side (2). The lack of paths is understandable as Great Wood is not an easy landscape to navigate, not only from a series of deep undulations running across the slope down to the beck, but also from fallen trees of monumental size. Some of these big trees must have been of an astonishing age when they fell, as their bark had the appearance of the scales of a giant armadillo. The ground flora was mostly over, so we determined to come back in the spring this year. Our first visit was too early. What we found on our second trip a few weeks later was that sheep had encroached into Sneaton Forest from its western boundary and had grazed through Great Wood down to Little Beck, as well as the woodland to the south of Great Wood that runs down to Parsley Beck. There was degraded ground vegetation everywhere, as well as sheep droppings, the evidence of the presence of sheep shown by the ubiquity of snagged wool on saplings and overhanging branches. The smell of the sheep excrement was pervasive; a noxious odour that I am exceptionally sensitive to (3,4). Sheep droppings had accumulated to such an extent on the path that bounds Great Wood to the south that it made the path unpleasant to use. It was heartbreaking to see the contrast with the undamaged ground flora on the other side of Parsley Beck, a sufficient barrier to the sheep.

I emailed the Yorkshire Forestry District Office when we got home, informing them of the sheep encroachment and damage to the ground flora. I explained that one of the intrinsic properties of ancient woodland is its ground flora of characteristic indicator plants (5). I noted that these were not put at risk by the resident roe deer population that we have observed in Sneaton Forest, but that it had only taken a couple of weeks of encroachment by sheep to put this ground flora in jeopardy, particularly those ancient woodland indicator plants that are sensitive to disturbance. I remarked that Sneaton Forest is a great local attraction for many reasons, and hoped that the sheep encroachment could be investigated and remedied so that the attraction of the ground flora would not be lost. The reply was initially encouraging, that the fence line would be checked and any breaches would be blocked and repaired as soon as possible. This was what came next:
“Regarding the woodland flora – light grazing is not a bad thing and the flora will recover”

I am just not the person to have thrown at me this slavish dogma of the conservation industry, indicating yet again the oppressive hegemony that farming pressure has on our landscapes and how casually it is regarded. The reply was anonymous. If it had been a named person, I would have pointed out that I wasn’t aware of any temperate forest where sheep grazing was a natural process, the origins of sheep in Mesopotamia (the fertile crescent) making that highly unlikely (6-8). I stopped eating sheep meat in 2003 as a principled objection to the ecological devastation caused in the uplands by this non-native, domesticated herbivore (and see this thread (9)). Moreover, I see the local extinction of ground flora in the ancient woodlands near me that have been sheep grazed (10). It was the uncomfortable recognition over two decades ago that the impact of farming in Britain was so pervasive, so that wild nature was never given the chance to express itself, which motivated me to become an advocate for wild land, a land free from human exploitation – self-willed land (11,12). Many people over the years have misinterpreted self-willed land, not realising that it has no past, just a point at which human dominion is removed, and a future of unfettered self assembly (13). The events at Sneaton Forest just added to an accumulating list of disappointments that have now become acutely unbearable. It makes a goal of eradicating farming from dominating wild nature seem ever further away.

The origins of rewilding

Rewilding had been my one big hope when I set out nearly 20 years ago on this advocacy of separating wild nature from farming - at outset, I could see the wolf-shaped hole in Britain, a decisive factor that was not apparent to me until I had learnt what rewilding entailed (14-17). The origins of rewilding derive from a group of leading edge conservation biologists that engaged with citizen activists arising out of a radical environmental movement of the 1980s, their common aim to devise and implement an approach to perpetuating regional biological diversity through wildland networks, a connected system of core protected areas located on farming–free, public lands in America (18). Rewilding must always be seen as reinstating the trophic ecology of wild nature, with free-living native species occupying every trophic level (19). No one point in the past is necessarily a reliable blueprint that has to be fulfilled to reinstate a fully functioning ecology. It is, though, a guide to what species are currently missing, and that would need reinstating to ensure a fully interactive trophic ecology. The wolf-shaped hole in Britain is an obvious absence, but human modification has extirpated more than just inconvenient mammals or predatory birds (20) its simplifying of land for farming has removed much of the structural vegetation that also needs reinstatement (16). Thus given the species and the space, a self-willed autonomous wild nature can develop of its own free volition.

The original rewilders used a focal species approach to design protected areas, contending that meeting the needs of a carefully chosen suite of 10 or so indicator species that encapsulated the whole range of regional habitat requirement, would achieve their aim of reinstating a complete ecosystem (18). These focal species were indicators for such as wilderness quality (areas undisturbed by human agency) and habitat quality, or were umbrella species or prey species. It was the conviction of the originators of rewilding that restoring wild nature is a recognition of the self-assembly of species into natural, self-perpetuating communities that is observable, predictable (on the basis of conservation biology) and gives rise to expectations. Given the characteristics of a location, its abiotic conditions, climate, extant species, the potential for in–migration of species, the need for reinstatement of missing species, and with the removal of barriers to that self-assembly, then there can be an anticipation of an ecologically feasible trajectory of change coupled with an expectation of its time scale. It is a confidence in the intrinsic properties of wild nature in being able to reproduce natural patterns of development and association.

Rewildling as originally conceived is of its time and place, a factor that could have been delimiting for its reach into the 21 century. Its subsequent transferability elsewhere needed identification of comparable opportunities on public lands rather than a compromising of its critical mission. Private land has anyway never been my target for rewilding (16). It is only publicly owned land, where the burden of extractive activity is removed, that can offer true freedoms to wild species. It argues for a national protected area system based on unexploited public lands, which is the characteristic in America, the country of origin of rewilding, as it is in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as Ireland and most of the countries in Continental Europe (21). Thus Britain is a backward nation, a situation that dates back to 1931 when the Addison Committee eschewed public purchase of land for a national park system for the UK (4,16,19,20,22). Nevertheless, more than 6% of Britain is publicly owned (23) and which can contain core areas of sufficient size for freely roaming large species. To ensure species resilience, these core areas need to be interconnected by wildlife movement linkages that are not hostile to species movement. These interconnections are likely to be between rather than within areas of public land, and will thus need to be negotiated through private land, a land sharing that has to be based on a meaningful coexistence (24). However, this is so far out from the straightjacket of human politics that we have here, of the ideological monetarisation of biodiversity (25-27) and of the sociological dominance where people get to make decisions that wild nature should be making (28). We are an ecologically illiterate nation. Our citizenry don’t get to have any meaningful participation in shaping the future of wild nature, nor in the use of its public land.

The reframing of rewilding

That I think that the transferability of rewilding has failed is because it has been fatally compromised. It has opportunistically been reframed by academics, whose poor scholarship has failed to capture its origins (18) from Jamie Lorimer who created the misconception in the literature that the entirely discredited Oostvaardersplassen was rewilding (17,29,30) to Nathalie Pettorelli who produces the most egregious and self-serving reframing of rewilding (22). Her technique is to shift the goalposts by extensively re-messaging everything to suit her anthropocentric purpose (31) a course she also follows when in response to criticism of her reframing (32,33). Fundamentally, Pettorelli doesn’t acknowledge the intrinsic ecological properties of wild nature of self-assembly and self-perpetuation (32). She dismisses this by asserting that these intrinsic properties are thwarted by internal/external change, that human induced environmental change is a greater factor in the determining of wild nature than those intrinsic properties. It’s as if climate change is bringing to an end the self-determination of wild nature. In her most recent paper Pettorelli is trying to do the same gutting of the meaning of wild as she and many others have done for rewilding (33). There is that usual Aunt Sally, the easy target for criticism and abuse of “pristine” that all detractors of wild and wilderness resort to, even though it is not a term used by advocates for wild or wilderness (34). She labels Dave Foreman’s book Rewilding North America from 2004 (35) as a “controversial vision” based on rewilding, a staggeringly arrogant presumption that her reframing of rewilding should supplant all others, including that of one of its originators. She thinks the landmark article on the scientific basis of rewilding by Soulé and Noss from 1998 (36) could be used to legitimise the exclusion of people, their history, and their current economic and cultural activities, but this is a failure to recognise the context in which those authors wrote, of an established system of strictly protected areas in public ownership that are without exploitation. As such, Pettorelli conveniently ignores, or is unaware of, the existence of national systems of protected areas in publicly owned lands with strictly protected reserves and core areas in National Parks in Europe and their absence of human exploitation (21). She doesn’t recognise the existence of wilderness in Europe (37) nor even allow for the fact that it is a legitimate aspiration, as exemplified by Germany setting a target of 2% for wilderness (38). Her nonsense about coexistence doesn’t even acknowledge the context of shared space in relation to the network linkages in connectivity (see above).

More damaging, though, than the reframing by academia, has been rewilding coming up against the dead hand of conservation in Britain (39) and in being shaped by sociological and economic pressures (40) thus subsuming it into power and ownership structures (25, 41). Land users and the voluntary sector have reframed rewilding to suit their other agendas, becoming in the process anthropized and commodified, and where it is now safari park rewilding, a means for farmers to diversify their business into wildlife tourism while still functioning as a meat factory (29, 42). The greatest casualty, the autonomy of non-human species, a key concept of the origins of rewilding, has not survived this reframing. A signal characteristic from this anthropizing and commodification is the confinement of herbivores behind fences, preventing their migration and thus denying their free living – often conveniently labelled as naturalized or naturalistic grazing, it has been exposed as “rewilding without predators” (43,44). For the wild species, this cuts across their home range size requirements and movement ecology, negating their natural instincts for habitat selection, their movement and use of resources, and the influence of predatory pressure (17). This is the hallmark of domestication and reduces them to the level of livestock. It is ecologically illiterate. More often than not, domesticated livestock are enfenced along with these wild species, or it is solely domesticated livestock that are enfenced and called rewilding, so that any pretence of it being a reinstatement of a natural process is completely fake (29). The irony of this being just refarming, or reagriculturing, is lost on these reframers. One proponent – a devotee of Knepp –sought a false differentiation, asserting that “Rewilding must have two or more large herbivores present” such as cattle, pigs, deer, or ponies, but that cattle alone would be “conservation grazing” (45). This was just fatuous gaming of farm animals, and needed an ecologically literate response that exposed the fakery as well as the trophic imbalance implied by rewilding solely being about the presence of herbivores. My riposte, based on a quick trawl of lost and extant native mammalian predators and birds of prey was that “UK rewilding must have present 3 large and 9 smaller carnivores, 7 insectivores and 8 raptors”. I know I missed a few out, such as bats being insectivores, but my intention was to emphasize that natural systems are far more trophically complex than just chucking various domestic livestock behind fencing.

Sanctification of this herbivorist agenda is also reflected in the recent literature. Iain Hutton, an arch grazerphile with a track record of research on ruminants (46) has belatedly got in on the reframing by advocating the use of domestic livestock in the “toolkit of managers responsible for rewilding....if the broader conservation needs of society are to be met” (47). It is seen as an “engagement of farmers in practises that are closer to their traditions” and, unsurprisingly, the paper is littered with terms like “socio-economic” “socio-ecological” and “socio-cultural”. However, as with many reframers of rewilding, the internal logic crumbles as it trips over the absence of natural predation and the need to control herbivore numbers in enclosed spaces, so that there is a protracted fumbling around what the harvesting of these meat factories constitutes. A follow-on paper by this grazerphile embellishes the herbivorist approach by invoking “eco-shepherding” of “domestic landraces” (traditional breeds of livestock) as a “novel concept” in what is just a continuing agricultural exploitation of land (48). That it is just a further anthropizing of rewilding is signalled by its terming of this as “Rewilding Lite”, and contrasting it as a legitimate counterpart - if not implied substitute - of “Rewilding Max” on a continuum of land use. The terms Rewilding Lite and Rewilding Max and their place on a continuum of land use are an appropriation from an article about seven years ago by Steve Carver, my colleague in the Wildland Research Institute (49). It seems lost on this grazerphile that Steve coined rewilding lite as a term of abuse, lite being advertising speak. Steve’s most recent term of abuse for the reframed rewilding is Kneppvaardersplassen, a useful commingling of the two locations whose promotion have done much to damage rewilding (40).

Isn’t the hyperbole of advertising speak what has come to characterise this reframed rewilding? It borders on dishonesty, albeit by omission or misdirection that obviate the blatant lie. I wonder how many of the 10,000 or so knew what they signed up to when they signed REFARMING (Rewilding) Britain’s petition calling on Government to create “core rewilding areas” on public land across 10% of the national parks (50)? Did the invocation of core rewilding areas conjure up Rewilding Max? The petition text doesn’t give any detail, but I waded through the press release and two other web pages associated with the campaign embodied in the petition, all of which refer to core rewilding areas (51-53). Tucked away in a footnote, the “Policy Briefing” said that land in core rewilding areas would be managed in a way that would score highly in a “‘rewilding spectrum’ of principles and criteria” developed by REFARMING Britain, but that you had to request a copy of that to see what it entailed (51). The give-away that it would be Rewilding Lite in these core areas was in a photo caption on the campaign page (52) and in the text of the press release (53) where it exclaimed that this rewilding of 10% of the national parks would result in “no loss of productive farmland” – it would thus be the usual domestic livestock grazing behind fences, so substantiating my use of the epithet REFARMING.

REFARMING Britain are just grandstanding with this campaign to gain profile and a big email contact list. I note the target for signatures to the petition seems to vary from week to week, going up from 10,000 to 25,000 before coming down to 15,000, but then it is not on an independent petition platform like Change.org or 38Degrees, nor is it a parliamentary petition, just an application bolted in to REFARMING Britain's website - see the template in (54). There is nothing original about this campaign by REFARMING Britain: identifying publicly owned areas in national parks is nothing new, nor is calling for wilder areas in the parks, nor indeed even calling for changes in legislation for national parks (55,56). Calling for changes in legislation falls within political activity under guidance from the Charity Commission on campaigning (57). The guidance says that any petition, or supporting material provided by a charity, should make it clear what the purpose of the petition is, so that those individuals considering supporting it know what they are signing up to. In addition, in relation to political activity, any claims made in support of a campaign must be well founded, and there should be a reasonable expectation of achieving the change. That this campaign is poor in meeting the standards required of a charity is unsurprising since the recently appointed Policy and Campaigns Coordinator at REFARMING Britain previously worked for the non-charitable organisation Friends of the Earth and thus has no experience of the accountability required of charities (58). It brings into question the governance of REFARMING Britain by the charity's trustees. We discussed this campaign when I was interviewed by Hanna Lindon for an article on national parks for The Great Outdoors magazine (59). I made the point that we should be looking at all our public land to make a difference for nature, and not just in national parks.

“If you don’t know whose shoulders you’re standing on, you are standing in a void”

There is no sense from amongst these reframers that wild nature should be the primary beneficiary of rewilding when all they seem to be concerned with is what humans can get out of it - driving systems for human use is not nature protection (41). As I have stated before, I’ve come to loathe the compromises, the excuses given for why anything less than a sound ecological approach and outcome to restoration of wild nature is acceptable, that it’s just a spectrum of wildness and any point on the continuum is a start (60). I don’t know why having an idealist or purist attitude has become a legitimate criticism when compromise only benefits people over wild nature; when there is never any intention to move up the continuum. Where is the morality in that, the ethical commitment that recognises the ecological reality? Empathy for wild nature must always be at the high end of the ethical spectrum and should never be dragged down and diluted by anthropocentrism and its mechanisms of domination. Rewilding as it has been reframed needs to be de-anthropized and de-commodified. Critical theory is needed to challenge those power and ownership structures, while there must be a sharper focus in political ecology in understanding that not everything must be seen in terms of human benefit.

I had intended to report on some of the positive developments that have been occurring for the future of the wolf in Europe, as it usually lifts my optimism and lends support to filling the wolf-shaped hole in Britain. Thus Spain through its state commission for natural heritage and biodiversity, a consultative body between the State and the autonomous provinces, has voted to give strict protection to wolves in all of Spain by banning their hunting in northern Spain (61,62). This will overturn the exception Spain has on strict protection in the north under the Habitats Directive, and makes ecological sense since a recent study showed that lethal management through hunting is likely hindering population recovery in wolves across the whole Iberian Peninsula, as well as inhibit transboundary connectivity (63). A few weeks after that vote to ban hunting, Spain’s Minister for Ecological Transition committed to extending wolf packs into currently unoccupied territories, and to create an ecological corridor for wolves with other European countries with the purpose of avoiding the genetic isolation of the Spanish wolf populations (64). The hunting of wolves in Slovakia that used to take place under quotas between November and January has been made illegal after the Environment Minster signed a decree enacting the year-round protection of the grey wolf (65,66). It will be illegal to capture, injure or kill, breed, sell or exchange wolves, bringing the country into line with its obligations for strict protection under the Habitats Directive.

However, the enthusiasm I always have for interpreting and communicating these aspects of wild nature and their reinstatement has waned, the motivation departed, as I have stared into the abyss of complete irrelevance that these reframers of rewilding have finally made me feel. It’s knocked the wind out of me so that I just can’t take the disappointment of seeing rewilding being damaged any more. I understand what Dave Foreman meant in that quote shown above, taken from his book Rewilding North America from 2004 (see pg. 146 in (67)). He was writing about the history of protected areas in North America, pointing out that "what some may think is new is, in fact, based on ideas and strategies from long ago". I would say that this also applies to rewilding; that the reframers of rewilding stand in a void because of their willful ignorance of its origins, its scientific basis in conservation biology, its biocentric vision, and its delivery in the public domain (18) so that by comparison the words and actions of these reframers lack any ecological coherence, rooted as they are in a continuing human dominance of wild nature.

The greater debate on rewilding can go on without me for a while, as I need a break, if only to have space to think about what my aims may be for the future.

Mark Fisher 12 July 2021

(1) Sneaton Forest, Forestry England

https://www.forestryengland.uk/sneaton-forest

(2) Great Wood, Ancient and Semi-Natural Woodland, MAGIC

https://tinyurl.com/yde54u55

(3) Walking the wild places, Self-willed land September 2010

www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/non_intervention.htm

(4) Hope is natural, hope is wild, Self-willed land September 2018

www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/smell.htm

(5) Glaves, P. et al (2009) A Survey of the Coverage, Use and Application of Ancient Woodland Indicator Lists in the UK. A Report to the Woodland Trust

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/4149223.pdf

(6) HISTORY OF SHEEP, INTERNATIONAL WOOL TEXTILE ORGANISATION

https://iwto.org/sheep/history-of-sheep/

(7) Vigne, J.-D. (2011) The origins of animal domestication and husbandry: a major change in the history of humanity and the biosphere. Comptes Rendus Biologies 334 (3): 171–181

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631069110002982?via%3Dihub

(8) Alberto, F.J., Boyer, F., Orozco-terWengel, P., Streeter, I., Servin, B., de Villemereuil, P., Benjelloun, B., Librado, P., Biscarini, F., Colli, L. and Barbato, M., 2018. Convergent genomic signatures of domestication in sheep and goats. Nature communications, 9(1): 1-9

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03206-y

(9) Pádraic Fogarty (@whittledaway) Twitter 3 July 2021

https://twitter.com/whittledaway/status/1411314268838957059

(10) Where have all the woodland flowers gone?, Self-willed land August 2020

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/woodland_grazing.htm

(11) About the author and articles, Self-willed land

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/author.htm

(12) Looking for wildland - developing a value system for wild nature, Self-willed land April 2006

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/look_wild.htm

(13) Wild Park, Brighton - not so wild now, Self-willed land December 2013

www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/wild_park.htm

(14) Fisher, M. (2003) Self-willed land - the rewilding of open spaces in the UK. Self-willed land

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/rep_res/SELF.pdf

(15) Fisher, M. (2009) Ecological incompleteness and our missing top predators: learning the lessons from abroad Wilder Horizons 1(1): 14-16

http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/groups/wildland/WH_1_1_09.pdf

(16) The most ambitious proposal for land management, Self-willed land July 2018

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/audacious.htm

(17)) Movement ecology and rewilding, Self-willed land September 2019

www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/movement_ecology.htm

(18) Fisher, M. (2020) NATURAL SCIENCE AND SPATIAL APPROACH OF REWILDING –evolution in meaning of rewilding in Wild Earth and The Wildlands Project. Self-willed Land March 2020

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/rep_res/REWILDING_WILDEARTH_WILDLANDS_PROJECT.pdf

(19) Rewiring an emptied food web, Self-willed land January 2018

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/small_mammals.htm

(20) The continuing destruction of our native trophic pyramid, Self-willed land February 2018

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/spiral_down.htm

(21) Fisher, M., Carver, S., Kun, Z., McMorran, R., Arrell, K., Mitchell, G., & Kun, S. (2010). Review of status and conservation of wild land in Europe. Report: The Wildland Research Institute, University of Leeds

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/rep_res/SCOTTISH_WILDLAND_WRI.pdf

(22) Conservation biology and the repair of our damaged and degraded ecosystems, Self-willed land April 2018

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/strongly_interactive.htm

(23) WHO REALLY OWNS THE UK? ABC Finance 2018

https://abcfinance.co.uk/blog/who-owns-the-uk/

(24) An ecological landscape – connectivity, cores and coexistence, Self-willed land March 2019

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/connectivity.htm

(25) Commodification of nature, Self-willed land January 2021

www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/commodification.htm

(26) What nature wants, Self-willed land February 2021

www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/what_nature.htm

(27) Spash, C. L., & Hache, F. (2021). The Dasgupta Review deconstructed: an exposé of biodiversity economics. Globalizations, 1-24

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14747731.2021.1929007

(28) Milfont, T. L., Richter, I., Sibley, C. G., Wilson, M. S., & Fischer, R. (2013). Environmental consequences of the desire to dominate and be superior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39(9), 1127-1138

http://cemusstudent.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Milfont-etal2013.pdf

(29) Using functional traits - walking rewilding and wolves straight into the criticism of Goldilocks Standards, Self-willed land June 2018

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/functional_traits.htm

(30) Faking the wild – safari park rewilding, Self-willed land May 2020

www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/safari.htm

(31) Pettorelli, N., Barlow, J., Stephens, P.A., Durant, S.M., Connor, B., Schulte to Bühne, H., Sandom, C.J., Wentworth, J. and du Toit, J.T., (2018)  Making rewilding fit for policy. Journal of Applied Ecology 55(3): 1114-1125

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1365-2664.13082

(32) du Toit, J.T. and Pettorelli, N. (2019) The differences between rewilding and restoring an ecologically degraded landscape. Journal of Applied Ecology, 56(11): 2467-2471

https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3860&context=wild_facpub

(33) Schulte to Bühne, H., Pettorelli, N. & Hoffmann, M. (2021) The policy consequences of defining rewilding. Ambio

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01560-8

(34) Breaking the pattern, Self-willed land October 2016

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/breaking_pattern.htm

(35) A contest between trees and animals - the grazing mosaic tendency, Self-willed land June 2019

http://self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/mosaic.htm

(36) Soulé, M. and Noss, R. (1998) Rewilding and Biodiversity: Complementary Goals for Continental Conservation Wild Earth 8(3)(Fall 1998): 18-28

http://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/key_docs/rcc_00097008_3_2.pdf

(37) When nature dies - the impact of the human species, Self-willed land July 2015

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/traditional_knowledge.htm

(38) One more step towards the trial release of lynx, Self-willed land June 2016

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/germany_lynx.htm

(39) The most unnatural conservation policy possible, Self-willed land July 2010

www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/unnatural_policy.htm

(40) More zombie ideas in ecology, Self-willed land March 2018

http://self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/zombie_ideas.htm

(41) Ecological flow, nature protection, and the wolf, Self-willed land July 2020

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/ecological_flow.htm

(42) Land ownership: taking a walk on the rewild side, Lex, Financial Times 4 July 2021

https://t.co/1z6PStO5zT?amp=1

(43) Nogues-Bravo, D., Simberloff, D., Rahbek, C. and Sanders N.J. (2016) Rewilding is the new Pandora’s box in conservation. Current Biology 26: 87-91

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215015754

(44) Trophic occupancy and the rehabilitation of the meaning of rewilding, Self-willed land April 2016

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/pandora.htm

(45) Jill Butler (@Safernoc934) Twitter 9 March 2021

https://twitter.com/Safernoc934/status/1369253670349602816

(46) Iain Gordon, The James Hutton Institute

https://www.hutton.ac.uk/staff/iain-gordon

(47) Gordon, I.J., Manning, A.D, Navarro, L.M. & Rouet-Leduc, J. (2021) Domestic Livestock and Rewilding: Are They Mutually Exclusive? Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 5: Article 550410

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2021.550410/full

(48) Gordon, I. J., Pérez-Barbería, F. J., & Manning, A. D. (2021). Rewilding Lite: Using Traditional Domestic Livestock to Achieve Rewilding Outcomes. Sustainability, 13(6), 3347

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/6/3347/htm

(49) Carver, S. (2014) Making real space for nature: A continuum approach to UK conservation. ECOS, 35, 4–14

https://www.ecos.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Ecos-35-3-4-Making-real-space-for-nature1.pdf

(50) DEMAND WILDER NATIONAL PARKS, Rewilding Britain

https://act.rewildingbritain.org.uk/demand-wilder-national-parks

(51) POLICY BRIEFING – HOW TO ACHIEVE WILDER NATIONAL PARKS, Rewilding Britain

https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/news-and-views/policy-statements/policy-briefing-how-to-achieve-wilder-national-parks

(52) WILDER NATIONAL PARKS, Rewilding Britain

https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/support-rewilding/our-campaigns-and-issues/wilder-national-parks

(53) GOVERNMENT URGED TO CREATE WILDER NATIONAL PARKS TO TACKLE NATURE AND CLIMATE CRISES, Rewilding Britain Press release

https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/news-and-views/press-releases-and-media-statements/government-urged-to-create-wilder-national-parks-to-tackle-nature-and-climate-crises

(54) PETITION - FRONT PAGE ACTION, Rewilding Britain

https://act.rewildingbritain.org.uk/

(55) Nature improvement and restoration areas - are they a step towards rewilding? June 2011

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/nature_improvement.htm

(56) Mark Fisher (@markwilderness) Twitter 14 June 2021

https://twitter.com/markwilderness/status/1404544568528453650

(57) Campaigning and political activity guidance for charities (CC9) Charity Commission England and Wales MARCH 2008

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/610137/CC9.pdf

(58) OUR TEAM, Rewilding Britain

https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are-and-how-were-run/our-team

(59) Why are our national parks failing to protect nature? Hannah Lindon, The Great Outdoors 17th June 2021

https://www.tgomagazine.co.uk/news/why-are-our-national-parks-failing-to-protect-nature/

(60) How much does wild nature mean to you? January 2020

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/ecocentric.htm

(61) La Comisión Estatal para el Patrimonio Natural y de la Biodiversidad propone incluir a todas las poblaciones de lobo en el Listado de Especies Silvestres en Régimen de Protección Especial, por lo que ya no será especie cinegética, 02/04/2021

https://www.miteco.gob.es/es/prensa/ultimas-noticias/la-comisi%C3%B3n-estatal-para-el-patrimonio-natural-y-de-la-biodiversidad-propone-incluir-a-todas-las-poblaciones-de-lobo-en-el-listado-de-especies-s/tcm:30-522472

(62) La caza de lobo será prohibida en España, ANTONIO CERRILLO, La Vanguardia 4 February 2021

https://www.lavanguardia.com/natural/fauna-flora/20210204/6222023/proteccion-lobo-divide-espana-dos.html

(63) Quevedo, M., Echegaray, J., Fernández-Gil, A., Leonard, J.A., Naves, J., Ordiz, A., Revilla, E. and Vilà, C. (2019) Lethal management may hinder population recovery in Iberian wolves. Biodiversity and Conservation, 28(2): 415-432

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10531-018-1668-x.pdf

(64) El Gobierno plantea crear un corredor ecológico de lobos con Europa, EFE verde Newsroom March 25, 2021

https://www.efeverde.com/noticias/lobos-corredor-ecologico/

(65) Minister signs decree enacting year-round protection for the grey wolf in Slovakia, The Slovak Spectator 22 April 2021

https://spectator.sme.sk/c/22644205/minister-signs-decree-enacting-year-round-protection-for-the-grey-wolf-in-slovakia.html

(66) Slovakia finally bans wolf hunting, Marek Grzegorczyk, Emerging Europe 12 May 2021

https://emerging-europe.com/news/slovakia-finally-bans-wolf-hunting/

(67) Foreman, D. (2004). Rewilding North America: a vision for conservation in the 21st century. Island Press

https://pdfslide.net/reader/f/rewilding-north-america-a-vision-for-conservation-in-the-21st-century

url:www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/requiem.htm

www.self-willed-land.org.uk  mark.fisher@self-willed-land.org.uk

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