Rewilding: The solution to all our problems?
You may have seen this meme floating around:
Elon Musk a few months ago was offering $100 million towards a prize for best carbon capture technology.
Well, lucky for us we this carbon capture device… they are called TREES :)
If you’ve watched David Attenborough’s most recent documentary A Life on Our Planet, or you’ve read his book by the same name, you’ll know that his largest recommended solution to the climate crisis is REWILDING - the process of restoring and expanding biodiverse spaces, communities and systems. I.e. letting the earth do it’s thing and reinstate it’s natural processes/biodiveristy.
This concept has totally fascinated me as a straightforward, achievable solution to solve pretty much all of our problems!
In my opinion there is a still a real disconnect between nature and the everyday discussions of climate change. We talk about changing consumption habits, using our KeepCups, switching to renewable energy (not that all of these aren’t important!). But I never hear anyone who is not in the conservation world talk about improving biodiversity or keeping spaces wild.
We talk about building eco friendly buildings, building more public infrastrcuture, buidling offshore wind farms. With a growing population, we do need to build stuff. But what if we didn’t always build? What if, for a change, we picked some important spots and left nature at it?
“Rewilding is a progressive approach to conservation. It’s about letting nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to shape land and sea, repair damaged ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes. Through rewilding, wildlife’s natural rhythms create wilder, more biodiverse habitats.”
Ireland is not so green
When people think of Ireland, they automatically think of the colour green, but the thing is, we are not really green at all. If you’ve flown into Ireland you will know that you are greeted with patchworks fields of green. But these fields are farmland, not wild. It only hit me recently that we don’t really have any predators in Ireland either (apart from us humans of course). No bears, no wolves, no big cats. Because we don’t really know much else, we see Ireland’s countryside as natural and arguably (it is!) beautiful but we don’t really think about how unnatural it really is.
Since moving back to Ireland, I’ve been making a conscious effort to learn more about conservation and wildlife here. It was only when I started getting into hiking here that I realised before how little natural forestry we have in Ireland and how little biodiversity we have. The proliferation of forest plantations in Ireland has really scarred the landscape.
Working in different parts of Asia, we could spend an entire day walking in one direction, covered by forest leaves the entire time and spotting new animals and plants with every step we took. But when I enter the “woods” or “forests” in Ireland and look down it’s pretty barren - there’s no flora or fauna on the ground apart from a bit of moss.
Ireland has the lowest forest cover of all European countries: approximately 11% compared to a European average of well over 30%. To make matters worse, only 2% of Ireland’s trees are native.
It’s true that after the Ice Age and a changing climate, Ireland was left with very few native trees. However, Teagasc (Ireland’s Agriculture and Food Development Authority) explain that Ireland experienced near-total destruction of its forests mainly because of human activity and a deterioration of the climate: from an initial forest cover of around 80% to less than 1%. Ireland is the only country in Europe where such complete forest destruction took place. Initially, the Irish State carried out most tree planting to stop Ireland's deforestation and to decrease Ireland's timber dependency. Most of these state forests were established on mountain land and consist mainly of exposure-tolerant, fast-growing conifers - this is why all the ‘forests’ look the same with the same trees!
I’ve been listening to the Irish Wildlife podcast called Shaping Mountains which is created and narrated by Patrick Fogarty (highly recommended podcast!).
In episode 4 he talks about the vision of the Wild Atlantic Rainforest, which could stretch from the outskirts of Macroom in (Cork), right out into the Atlantic Ocean via the fan of peninsulas from Dingle (Kerry) in the north to Mizen Head in the south.
“Allowing the trees to return would transform the landscape, from one which is largely open and barren today, to one which is lush and teeming with life”
How can we rewild the earth?
THE LAND
“Shaping Mountains” gives an interesting perspective and method of how we could rewild Ireland and I highly recommend listening to the full episode.
It explains that rewilding a forest won’t happen overnight. But certain native trees, if given the chance, could spring up fairly fast in a few short years. Trees like rowan, birch, willow and hazel.
A controversial method that would work is cutting back on traditional farming, noteable sheep farming in the hills. This would allow the plants to grow back in our mountains, which would result in more food for wildxser. But this would not last in the long-term as the deer would eat all the fauna and we would back to square one. A predator would need to be introduced, much like the infamous Yellowstone National Park wolf reintroduction. Lynx or wild boar would do the same job as wolves here in Ireland. This would probably not go down well with a lot of people in Ireland, especially in farmers.
However, it has been done in other places in Europe. Bison has been slowly introduced since the 1950s in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Belarus and Lithuania. As of July 2022, Bison have been reintroduced to the UK!!
Bison were plentiful all over Europe until they were decimated by hunting. The species only survived thanks to 54 animals that were kept in different zoos, originating from only 12 founder animals. In 1954 the first bison were released back into the wild in the Białowieża forest in Poland.
Bison is a keystone species and ecosystem engineer. They eat up to 60kg of grass, bushes and other vegetation as well as fertilise the land too. Coupled with evidence to show that they can live in relatively compact, diverse habitats alongside other herbivores such as horses and cattle, means that far more European sites can now be considered suitable for bison reintroduction. These wild herds could really have an impact on encouraging biodiverse ecosystems in Ireland and all around Europe!
Now bringing back wild animals might be extreme, especially somewhere like Ireland. But there are other ways to rewild too. If we just leave nature alone, really incredible things can happen to have a positive effect on biodiversity. A fantastic example is Dunsany Nature Reserve in Country Meath. Dunsany Estate is Ireland's largest privately owned nature reserve and at present Ireland's only recognized large scale rewilding project. Most o the 1600 has been fully rewilded and over the years has seen the return of the woodpecker and other birds such as herons, red kites, jay birds and sparrow hawks. Along with birds there are red deer, otters badgers, hares, pine martins and stouts living on the estate. Its a really amazing story and the project is led by Lord Dunsany who is a remarkable person with a passion for nature - full post and interview with the Lord Dunsany coming soon!).
Other examples of rewilding are regenerative farming - a conservation rehabilitation approach to food and farming systems, which regenerates topsoil and increases biodiversity.
THE OCEAN
Sometimes it can be forgotten that the ocean is a wild place too!
The destruction we’ve caused on land is also happening in our seas. We tend to not talk about it as much since we can’t see it. Check out my blog post “There’s no more fish in the sea” which explains exactly what is happening - think overfishing, bottom trawlers and factory ships.
To bring back healthy fish populations, reduce coral reef bleaching and increase overall health and biodiversity of our oceans, we need to REWILD!
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). More on this soon in a seperate post!
Benefits of rewilding
I encourage you to read David Attenborough’s “A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future”. He speaks of rewilding in all areas of earth and the benefits it could bring. He also provides clear and simple solutions on how to do this. Some of these are:
Fixing what we have destroyed: Many ecosystems – the basis of our natural wealth – are broken. Rewilding offers a historical opportunity to recover them
Economic prospects and employment from eco-tourism: “safaris” have become synonymous with Africa, but why ca'n’t we do the same in Europe? European Safari Company offer “unique experiences that directly support wild nature and wildlife comeback in some of Europe’s most special places.” The more.
Bringing back wildlife: Rewilding will accelerate their recovery and restore important food chains and trophic cascades through the reintrocutoin of keystone species (top predators or herbivores) which are vital to healthy ecosystems.
Ensuring well-being: more wild spaces mean more places to discover nature and the outdoors. Naturally functioning ecosystems are better at providing us with clean air and water.
Fighting climate change: Wild spaces are good at preventing flooding, storing carbon and helping us to adapt to climate change.
Sustainability: nature is fully capable of taking care of itself. This means letting natural processes shape our landscapes and ecosystems, instead of people actively managing it which often requires high costs.
To end, it is important to note that we can’t just stop development and declare all land is left for rewilding. The world has a rising population and we do need land to live on, work in and to grow food for ourselves.
References:
https://www.teagasc.ie/crops/forestry/advice/general-topics/history-of-forestry-in-ireland/
https://iwt.ie/episode-4-the-wild-atlantic-rainforest/
https://rewildingeurope.com/rewilding-in-action/wildlife-comeback/bison/#:~:text=From%20the%201950s%20onwards%2C%20European,reintroduced%20back%20into%20the%20wild.&text=The%20Bia%C5%82owie%C5%BCa%20Primeval%20Forest%2C%20an,with%20around%201000%20wild%20bison.
https://www.farmingfornature.ie/