All property is environment. To begin with, and before man’s interference, it is a wholly natural tableau, but as we bend it to our will true wilderness loses out. Landscape cover of farming, forestry and urban development in the UK affects more than three quarters of the total area, according to the Natural Environment Research Council. The remaining quarter is mainly mountains and moorlands, usually grazed, or broadleaved woodland, only small pockets of which are not determined by man in some way. Pristine natural habitats can be argued to be nearly non-existent, at best isolated fragments in a sea of human land use.
The concept, as well as the loss of, ‘wilderness’ is the cause of increasing debate in the English conservation community, as the basis of a more encompassing approach to nature conservation. ‘Rewilding’ remains controversial to an establishment approach educated by Aldo Leopold’s plea for the ‘wise use of resources’ and a sensible blend of man in nature. The pre-eminent role of man is enshrined in the agri-environment schemes harnessed on most UK farms, delivering preservation of semi-natural habitats and the cessation of harmful (to wildlife) activities. A forceful critique of this approach was made by the journalist George Monbiot, in a book called Feral, who rightly pointed at continuing declines in wildlife and the paucity of diversity in so called conserved areas, including institutional nature reserves as well as farmlands. Our record both recently and since the last ice age is poor, with many mammals driven to extinction, and George plaintively calls for greater provision of wilderness for the future.
Straight-tusked elephants became extinct about 100,000 years ago, but once wandered freely across Europe. The recent hiatus of a single wolf at ‘the gates of Paris’ this winter would suggest to me that ‘wilderness’ is unpopular, though, and the elephants will not be returning. Genetic engineering, perhaps combining the African forest elephants with their Asian cousins, does, however, raise intriguing possibilities for European landscapes. We still expect Africans to co-habit with the larger African elephant, so why can’t we enrich our fauna accordingly?
The debate has real teeth in considering the future of wildlife habitats on our own farm on the Pevensey Levels of East Sussex. A nature reserve in the Netherlands called the Oostvaardersplassen adopted a rewilding approach nearly 50 years ago in conditions similar to the low lying marshes we have at home. Its bittern population at one stage exceeded the total found in the whole of Britain, and its species diversity is spectacular, much being made of the brief return of a black vulture (until its demise upon flying into a train). Its area (at 5600ha) is only about 30% greater that the acreage of the Levels. We are impatient to match their achievements in wildlife terms, but to do so would mean abandoning the carefully managed ‘balance’ exerted by our grazing cattle and sheep and micro-directed through our straitjacket of agri-environment funding prescriptions. Our pastures would have to merge with expanding fens and reedbeds, our hedges develop into scrub and wood and our farm output much diminish.
Such a vision would see species such as spoonbills and godwits reappear, otters and beavers also. Maybe the return of the nightingale and the great reed warbler. To achieve it, though, would require long term funding and an evolution of cultural expectation to ensure political acceptance, all lacking at present but promised in the rhetoric of Brexit. The English countryside has always been highly manicured but real wildlife conservation must challenge this socio-historic attitude. Persuasively, the countryside appearance must reflect the philosophical refinement that nature must have its place.
