Rewilding the future
Next month sees Climate Action North East’s conference, Rewilding the Future and I wish I were going. One of our leading naturalists, Chris Packham will be talking to businesses about opportunities for restoring our ecosystems. I worked with Climate North East during my time at the UK Climate Impacts Programme; so I know it will be a successful event. Not just a talking shop, it will feature three ‘mini-hacks’ to come up with perspectives, inspiration and action:
- Past, present and future barriers to rewilding and biodiversity projects?
- Achievements and successes to-date, and projected for the future?
- Can we form partnerships, collaborations and projects and tap into networks?
George Monbiot has written movingly about rewilding, in his excellent 2013 book Feral and elsewhere: “We are surrounded by broken relationships, truncated natural processes, cauterised ecologies. In Britain we lack almost all large keystone species: ecological engineers that drive the fascinating dynamics which allow other lifeforms to flourish … What rewilding offers is a new set of options in places where traditional industries can no longer keep communities alive, where schools and shops and chapels and pubs are closing and young people are leaving the land to find work elsewhere.”