Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm

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The great concerns of our time - climate change, natural resources, food production, water control and conservation, and human health - all boil down to the condition of the soil.” Knepp may be a familiar name if you follow British environmental news: it’s synonymous with what’s known as rewilding. Tree’s husband, Sir Charlie Burrell, inherited the estate in 1987 and tried running it as an intensified dairy farm, but the enterprise was bleeding money and in 2000 they gave up and let the land return to nature. That wasn’t a totally hands-off process, though; it involved restoring the forest and river ecosystems and reintroducing traditional species like fallow deer, Exmoor ponies, ancient-breed cattle and Tamworth pigs. Wilding is truly the most magnificent and inspiring book. -- Adam Nicholson, author of The Seabird's Cry Wilding describes the inspirational story of a pioneering rewilding experiment that is changing the way we look at Nature, the countryside and conservation. Beautifully written, it marks the moment when the task at hand can no longer be about slowing down the inexorable decline of wildlife, but to begin the job of restoration. -- Tony Juniper, former Executive Director of Friends of the Earth

Wilding Quotes by Isabella Tree - Goodreads Wilding Quotes by Isabella Tree - Goodreads

I learned, too, about the importance of reintroducing keystone species, ranging from pigs (as a substitute for the politically unacceptable wild boar), longhorn cattle (substituting for bison), roe and red deer, the beaver and even - perhaps especially - the humble earthworm. The explanations for the significance of these species gave a fascinating insight into animal behaviour. The knowledge is already out there. We just have to listen. The contributors to this issue all have a deep understanding of how nature works. Some are scientists; others, environmental journalists exploring the latest thinking about ecosystems and how to repair them; or poets, novelists and activists examining our responses to the current crisis. These stories will, I hope, be both enlightening and empowering, galvanising us to bring about change. Isabella Tree’s remarkable journey takes us to the heart of the remote and beautiful Highlands of Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya – one of the most extraordinary and dangerous regions on earth. Comic and tragic by turns, Islands in the Clouds is her moving story of the Highland people and the changes transforming their world. the updated 2016 State of Nature report discovered that the UK has lost significantly more biodiversity over the long term than the world average. Ranked twenty-ninth lowest out of 218 countries, we are among the most nature-depleted countries in the world.”I was given this book, which I would never have considered buying, as a Father's Day gift. I am so grateful! Particularly timely . . . an excellent primer, and anyone who is interested in how we share the planet - what it looks like, what we eat, and what nature can teach us - should read this book. * Sunday Times * We forget, in a world completely transformed by man, that what we’re looking at is not necessarily the environment wildlife prefer, but the depleted remnant that wildlife is having to cope with: what it has is not necessarily what it wants.” This book really opened my eyes even more and I learned many things despite being an ecologist and life long conservationist. The chapter on soil and worms is especially thought provoking. All of that is the core topic of the book. But the other interesting aspect was something so obvious to Tree that it took a while to dawn on me. She starts the story by describing her and her husband's efforts to intensively farm their land, winning awards and setting records for dairy production despite unfavorable heavy clay soil. And as she described that work, I was picturing their land as a dairy farm similar to the ones I grew up near: big, rural fields in the country, with a small farmhouse near the sheds and dairy barns on the road. So when they got their land fenced and introduced feral cows and pigs, it seemed fairly reasonable. It was only when she started talking about how conflicts with dog walkers limited their breed choices, and how the wild pigs tried to steal food for a wedding they were hosting, that I remembered just how different things are in Britain. Then she mentions the castle and it all fell into place.

Wilding by Isabella Tree | Waterstones Wilding by Isabella Tree | Waterstones

To note: fallow land can be a massive carbon sink and flood plains and other wetlands, er, absorb water. We don't need to build hugs concrete walls, we need the land to do its thing. And it is also a massive mistake to try to create habitats we think will suit rare species because as Knepp has shown we often misinterpret what those are given so many of these species are hanging on at the margins. We need to make space. This must be the most inspirational nature book of the year . . . a narrative of conservation, courage, vision and miracles... The story of what happened is thrilling . . . the Knepp Conservation Project is world-famous: a beacon of hope . . . Read this book and marvel. -- Bel Mooney, 'The Year's Best Books on Nature' * Daily Mail *

Summary

The book begins and ends with the soil. During the WWII, Britain faced severe food shortages and the only way to survive was to increase food production somehow. So began intensive farming which increased yields and enabled the country to survive those war years. When the war finished, however, the country did not return to the pre-war methods, but rather intensified the the pressure on the land to produce more and more at cheaper and cheaper cost. Today, the cost of food takes a remarkably low percentage of our income compared with previous generations. But we pay for this in other ways. There is scientific evidence to suggest that food quality has dropped significantly, even to levels that could explain the apparent sudden rise in things like lactose intolerance or other allergies: there could be more of this around nowadays because the products themselves have altered in response to the intensive farming methods used to increase yields. Isabella Tree would argue, I think, that this pursuit of higher yields has gone beyond the point where it is self-defeating: we apply more and more pressure to the land to produce more when the reason it does not is because of all the pressure we have already applied that has damaged it.