Dr. Steve Carver is Professor of Rewilding and Wilderness Science in the School of Geography, University of Leeds and Director of the Wildland Research Institute. He has over 30 years of experience in GIS and multi-criteria evaluation, with special interests in wilderness, wildlands, rewilding, landscape evaluation, and public participation. He has worked extensively on the […]
Read full article: Episode 163: Steve Carver on the Challenges of Implementing Rewilding Goals Across Fragmented Geographic, Cultural, and Political Landscapes
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(00:04):
Ecological restoration
is human led nature enabled.
So in other words, it's us
using
nature based approaches
to achieve a particular
outcome. And whether that if that's restoration of
coral reef or it's river restoration or whatever,
we're using
nature based solutions to achieve a particular
(00:27):
desired outcome.
Rewilding flips that on its head, and we
say that rewilding
is
nature led, human enabled. So it's nature
determining
its own ecological trajectory, and it's us having
the humility and the far sight to actually
give it the space and indeed the time
(00:48):
to allow it to do that.
So it doesn't we don't have a set
outcome from rewilding. It's an open ended process
in that respect.
(01:27):
You're listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast.
I'm your host, Jack Humphrey.
What does rewilding mean on a global scale,
and how do we implement rewilding projects across
a wide variety of different geographic, cultural, and
political constraints?
To guide us through this intricate landscape is
doctor Steve Carver, a professor from the University
(01:47):
of Leeds School of Geography and the co
chair of IUCN's
Rewilding Thematic Group.
For nearly a decade, Steve and his colleagues
have led a global effort on behalf of
the IUCN
to define what rewilding actually is.
The result is a landmark paper, Guiding Principles
for Rewilding in Conservation Biology, and the New
Comprehensive IUCN Guidelines.
(02:09):
It's a discussion about scale, connectivity,
coexistence,
and the ultimate hopeful future of wildness. We
begin with Steve giving us some background to
lay the foundation for today's conversation.
We produced a paper back in 2021,
which, has got quite a lot of traction.
It was called guiding principles for rewilding
(02:30):
and conservation biology. And there's some big names
on that paper, not just in Europe, North
America, but elsewhere.
Yeah. That set out 10 guiding principles for
rewilding and a definition.
And it came off the back of a
request from
the IUCN,
the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
And, you know, that's made up of a
(02:50):
series of pillars, and it was the Commission
for Ecosystem Management that asked us to set
up a rewilding task was
to really kind of
bottom out what
rewilding
is about, you know, come up with a
an attempt, anyway, at least, a a unifying
definition
and a set of guiding principles.
And so that's what we did.
(03:12):
You know, that was based around
a,
a survey
of,
you know, some of the leading names, thinkers
on rewilding
and, you know, pioneers,
a survey of
the principles that had been already written down
by a bunch of organizations
that were doing rewilding,
and then a whole series of workshops. And
(03:33):
I think we've reached out to well over
a 100 people
and, organizations
in coming up with the definition and the
principles.
And that's kinda rolled over into the document
that was published last month at the,
World Conservation Congress in Abu Dhabi,
which is this,
you know, guidelines for rewilding document.
(03:55):
So, yeah, it's been a long time coming.
It's kind of eight years in the making.
We're now a a rewilding
thematic group, so we're now permanent.
And is it just, you know, before we
we we lose sight of the fact, you
know, I'm I'm here with you today, which
is great, but there's a whole bunch of
other people behind this. You know, my colleagues
in the core
group of the rewilding thematic group, but all
(04:17):
of the people have contributed.
You know, I'm just I'm just a I'm
just a secretary in many senses of the
word, and I get my name on the
paper first.
You're too humble. And and the first question
that I really have from that is,
how would you characterize the need for
guidelines? Was it that chaotic before we started
(04:39):
to organize ourselves
internationally
around
rewilding? Because in North America, we thought we
had it pretty well defined, but it was
a very North American rewilding at the same
time.
Bringing up differences between different countries is
gets confusing. Yeah. I think I mean, I
to be honest, I think you you probably
did nail down the ecological principles pretty well.
(05:01):
But I think what we need to recognize
is that,
you know, rewilding is very much a place
based in a participatory
outlook on,
you know, approaches to conservation.
And,
you know, and I think
that's what changes as you move it around
the world. You know, we've written, you know,
papers about
(05:21):
comparing and contrasting North America with Europe, for
example. I mean, I'm you know, sat in
Yorkshire, England.
And, you know, it's a very different thing.
Yes. The ecological principles
are, you know, uniform.
You know, it's they apply wherever you are.
However, it's how you then apply those where
you've got to be
cognizant cognizant of the fact that, you know,
(05:42):
different cultures, you know, different legal systems,
all of that will mean, you know, big
differences in how it's actually implemented and applied.
It's it was a tough task, I would
imagine. It it it's tricky. Yeah. I mean,
inevitably, we've we've had to generalize.
But, you know, going back to what your
comment about, you know, it was a bit
chaotic,
in terms of having
(06:03):
rewilding as a as a concept and as
approach was then being
applied
in different situations globally. You know, a lot
of people say, well well, what is he?
You know?
And, you know, Dolly Jorgensen wrote a, you
know, a quite an influential paper back in
2015
and, you know, called rewilding a plastic term.
You know? It it became molded to whatever
(06:25):
people wanted it to be.
You know? Yeah. Okay. We've got this kind
of general idea that the ecological,
you know, giving giving,
well, as we call it, you know, giving
nature the space and the time to determine
its own ecological trajectory, you know? That that
comes with some baggage depending on on where
you are in the world. You know, we
say it's got to be
(06:46):
it's got to be context specific.
What would you say is the single most
important principle that policymakers
and the public, wherever they are in the
world, need to understand from this work?
Well, as I I think it's you know,
the fact that, you know, rewilding is is,
is nature led. You know, it's about functional
ecological restoration,
(07:06):
and it's about scale
as well. You know, we aspire when we're
looking at rewilding for
to think about large scale restoration
through landscape scale planning.
And that, you know, then brings in some
of these political issues about land ownership and
land management
and collaboration
across, you know, large areas. And a lot
(07:26):
of people, you know, particularly in Europe and
particularly in The UK, are are doing very
small scale stuff.
And I think it's just that realization
that, you know, what we're talking about here
is is large scale,
you know, giving space back to nature.
And, you know, if if if you forget
that, then you're somehow missing the point with
rewilding.
You deal a lot in space. You do
(07:48):
a lot of mapping work, and that's what
you were
well known for before you took on this
project, and
that's an issue. When you start mixing in
the politics, land ownership, and everything else,
when when you hear people talk about 30
by thirty
and fifty by 50
and these very, very lofty goals, considering also
(08:08):
the global political climate seems to be tending
away from what we would like it to
do Uh-huh. To hit those goals,
that combined with the space and everything else,
I mean, that's the GIS thing. Right? Yeah.
That's right. Yeah. I've been
doing chewing away at the the problem of
identifying and defining
(08:29):
and and modeling
wilderness quality, wilderness character for many years now.
And it just seemed a natural progression to
to move into looking at opportunities for rewilding
in terms of you you know, you're right.
You know, the the UN's Global Biodiversity Forum,
Kumen Montreal Agreement has this, you know, these
30% targets, the 30 by 30 vision.
(08:51):
You know, one that I think it's target,
target two says we got to
restore. And if you call you know, wanna
call that rewilding, but restore 30% of degraded
land, sea, and water,
across the planet. And then there's target three,
which says, you know, protect
30% of land, sea, and water for hard
biodiversity
(09:12):
nature.
And that's you know, those are great targets.
They're not quite the 50% of how, nature
needs half or half earth projects, but, you
know, they're good starting points. And and these
the target for this is 2030.
So that's, you know, that's less than five
years away.
And,
yeah, it's tricky to see how we might
meet reach those. But as a geographer, the
(09:33):
question I always have is, yeah, great. You
know? But where?
It's easy for, you know, large countries with
large areas of, you know,
pretty empty I'm talking about empty as in
terms of human terms,
landscapes like, you know, Canada or whatever
to and I think using a European example,
you know, the the Scandi states,
(09:54):
so Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland,
very easy for them to identify 30%.
But it's it's a tricky proposition for some
of the smaller,
more densely populated countries like England,
or Belgium or the other lowland countries in
Europe.
I think a better approach
would be to look at it in terms
(10:17):
of biomes, ecological,
areas across whichever region we're looking at. And
so we wrote a paper for the World
Wilderness Congress
last year
where we we'd already mapped wilderness quality in
Europe, version two of that, across Continental Europe.
And we started to sort of slice it
up based on these 30 by 30 targets
(10:38):
and say, well, you know, where is the
top 30%
wildest landscape in in Europe? And if we
were thinking about targeting areas for rewilding,
that might seem reasonable.
However, it's very biased towards the, you know,
the high altitude, high latitude areas that could
do that.
Rocks and ice, Dave called it. Absa yeah.
(10:59):
Absolutely. As you would expect. So that's kinda
missing the point. I mean, but there's a
there's we sliced it up politically as well.
So we also said, okay. Where's the top
30 on a country by country basis?
And, of course, in doing that, you've got
a lot of small smallish countries in in
in Europe. You suddenly increase the area, which
if you're taking the total area of Europe,
suddenly increase the area somewhat
(11:20):
that's covered by these 30 by 30 targets.
But then you think, well, actually, this is
missing the point entirely is where,
I think it was Leopold that said, you
know, the first rule of intelligent tinkering is,
you know, keep all the parts. Mhmm. There's
somebody who tinkers with old British motorcycles. I've
I've fully ascribed to that, that mantra.
So why not, you know, why not look
(11:42):
for the top 30%
on a, you know, sort of European biome
level?
And then then you get a really interesting
image out, which I think is a more,
you know, ecologically
sound way forward.
Because you then come back to the problems
of, political geographies because a lot of these
areas that, you know, you're dealing with transboundary
(12:02):
conservation, of course. Yeah.
You know, you've got the tricky issue of
how you coordinate
across national boundaries,
international boundaries
to achieve those aims. And, you know, as
we started talking about that, you know, the
world is not a particularly,
you know, a place which where everybody's speaking
on the same
(12:23):
singing from the same English English sheet at
the moment, politically speaking at least. Yeah.
It is it does seem like a club,
you know, just hitting something over the head
with a we just need 30%.
When you bring up the biomes, and and
there are places I mean, you could get
to 30%
in, like,
in Nevada
(12:44):
Mhmm. The state. And and that 30%
would do
next to nothing for,
you know,
biological diversity compared to
going to all the hot spots.
Yeah. I I wonder and this is a
this is a huge problem for you map
guys because when you get on audio podcasts,
the very best thing that you can do
(13:05):
to demonstrate your work is That's right. Show
a map. Look at this picture. Yeah. But
you but you've also been aware of this
problem for quite some time, and it's probably
made you really good at explaining
what you're saying what what what they you'd
otherwise be seeing. Like, I'm really interested in,
you know, what would an overlay look like
when you went from just 30%
(13:26):
to Uh-huh. The biomes?
How did those two maps look different?
Well, as I said, the the the original
map looks, you know, like we're looking at
the the Nolovin Climbs and the high altitude
areas. There's very strong altitudinal
and latitudinal
bias
to the top 30% in Europe,
if you took Europe as a whole. So
(13:48):
you've got all of the northern areas of
Northern Finland and Norway and Sweden, Iceland,
very well represented.
And in the northern areas, of course, we
included,
Russia up to the, Urals.
And all of the, high altitude areas are
nicely represented. So the Alps, the Pyrenees, the
Carpathians,
(14:09):
etcetera.
As soon as you change that to country
level,
you know, the
you still see that in microcosm. So it's
the the high altitude, high latitude areas where,
you know, those countries are represented,
they're standing out. But then you see some
very
broken fragmented
(14:29):
patterns in countries which are
low lying, relatively highly populated,
densely populated,
you know, countries like Belgium and things, very
sort of fragmented pattern.
Soon as you then sort of think, well,
okay. Let's take identify the top 30%
via biome,
then the pattern changes again entirely.
(14:51):
Yes. You've still got those well, if you
think about it, you know, those classic
school Atlas images of all of the different
worlds, different biomes,
then you start seeing, you know, the top
30%
within those. And that's when it starts to
get interesting, and it's really tricky to
describe without having a map in front of
us. But,
(15:11):
yeah, it's it's problematic.
And, of course, the problem with that is
that
all of the areas where
we as humans have been able to exploit,
particularly for agriculture, but also latterly for forestry
and for fisheries and for other natural resources.
Those have been, you know, heavily exploited. So
(15:32):
the
lowland, savannah, and, temperate,
woodland
landscapes, all of them have been easy to
occupy
and to exploit. You know, if you're thinking
about human appropriation of net primary productivity,
that's, you know, the the stuff that we
can extract from essentially soil and and other
(15:53):
other resources
where we've been able to grow food. And
so Yeah. Wild areas are mess immensely underrepresented
in the fertile areas, the areas which were
easy to farm and to settle.
And so that's why that image looking at
the top 30% of the different biomes is
quite interesting, particularly when you look at those
(16:15):
biomes where we've been able to, you know,
easily farm and and to settle.
It's somewhat predictable.
I mean, I I don't think that you
probably were too surprised by the results of
looking at it that way, but it's also
sad because it puts rewilding on that map
in that context. It puts rewilding in direct
opposition to human
(16:36):
progress.
You know? It's like we take all the
good stuff, and we're like, where's all the
good stuff? And it's like, well, you're standing
on where it formerly existed.
And Indeed. And that's the case probably with
these maps is that this they show very
clearly that problem.
Yeah. And I say that's why when you
get into those landscapes
where we have appropriated
(16:57):
that, you know, productivity
for growing food, you know? And don't get
me wrong. We need to feed ourselves. So,
you know, when people quite often round on
me saying, oh, you wanna rewild everywhere? I
said, no. We don't. I'm as fond of
some food as well that the next person.
So, you know, it's a it's a question
of, you know, going back to 30%. It's
it's where appropriate and where possible.
(17:19):
But it is it is
as you say, it's kinda sad that it's
gonna be really difficult to think about rewilding
and giving nature
some space back
in those areas which
are easily farmed,
or, you know, more productive land. So if
you just take The UK, for example, you
know, a lot of our rewilding
(17:40):
efforts
are really focused on
the,
low grade agricultural land. You know, so, you
know, like The US, we have a land
capability system, which, you know, puts grade one
agricultural land, you know, which is great for
growing high value horticultural
products,
fruit and veggies, for example.
And grade two land's great for arable, you
(18:01):
know, for growing, grain crops.
Grade three is great for grazing, you know,
for milk production and and beef cattle, etcetera.
Grade four, you start to get into marginal
land where, you know, production is largely
dependent on government subsidies for it to turn
a profit. And then grade five, grade six,
you know, you you can't really do much
(18:23):
on that except a bit of forestry, bit
of kind of rough grazing,
and recreation.
So it naturally
rewilding finds its home in some of these
more marginal landscapes.
And that just makes it really fragmented and
difficult to see how you can maintain connectivity
in a representative
set of ecosystems
(18:43):
across a continent like Europe, indeed The US,
for example,
you know, where much of the productive land
has fallen under the hoof and the plow.
Which I think it's pretty
obvious why we needed to add another c
to the three c's.
And that is coexistence
because I don't see how you get two
(19:04):
rewilding goals in these very tight,
delicate
areas and and situations and cultures and politics
without
a really big
focus on coexistence.
Yeah. And, you know, that's
that's why we need that really big shared
vision and common common set of principles at
(19:25):
a global level. You know, it it's
I just don't see that happening. Unfortunately, I
don't want to be pessimistic. But I see
a lot of good stuff going on at
a sort of an individual country level and
individual,
you know, philanthropic
type projects and what have you. But I
just don't see that global cooperation,
(19:45):
what's necessary
to, you know, produce these big wins,
you know, for shared vision, set of common
principles, you know, which we've got now. But,
you know, do you see those being applied
at a global level? Well, yeah, I can't
see that at the moment. You know, don't
get me wrong again. You know, there are
some good, projects outlined, like the global rewilding
(20:06):
alliance, you know, pushing on this door.
But, yeah, it is a it is a
tool for global sustainability. And if we get
it right, then I I see there's hope.
But if we don't,
and, you know, and how many wakes the
world go round it,
it's also a great, source of inertia for
any of this kind of forward thinking.
It's also not made any easier by rewilding
(20:28):
being such a popular term that people are
using it for gut biome,
ebook sales,
men beating their chests and playing drums in
the woods,
and calling Rice sauces.
Yes. Yes. I mean, the rice sauce calls
rewilding.
I mean, it is a fantastic word. It's
one of the best words that humanity has
(20:48):
ever come up with, but,
yeah, it is you know, and that's why
I wanted to talk to you because you
are part of a team that tried to
make sense of it all, and in a
way that would make it make sense as
best possible
for anyone trying to understand how they might
implement something in their country, in their city,
in their town,
anywhere in the world, and,
(21:10):
not a small task. And so why do
you think
is this still just way up in the
clouds?
Like, you released all of this stuff. It's
still being kinda discussed at a high level
and everything. How does it fall from where
it is to the ground
and start to become
maybe a messily applied,
(21:30):
factor in how people do rewilding in their
area?
Yeah. Well, I I think, you know, going
back to that,
you know, comment I made about Dolly Oganston's
paper about it being a plastic term. I
think this, you know, the work that we've
done has tried to,
you know, kind of solidify
that and,
remove some of that undue flexibility
(21:52):
in what is and isn't rewilding.
And so I think having a a unifying
definition,
which is kinda wordy, but it necessarily
had to be,
and a set of principles of which, you
know,
projects,
individuals,
organizations
can go down a list of principles and
(22:13):
go tick tick, maybe not, you know, or,
yeah, we aspire to that particular principle, but
we're not there yet.
I think having those set of principles
and a series of guidelines
enables people to think, is what I'm doing
rewilding, or is it something else?
And, you know, if it's regenerative agriculture or
(22:34):
if it's more traditional ecological restoration,
there's nothing wrong with that. I think, you
know, conservation needs a spectrum of approaches.
But, you know, let's be clear as to
what rewilding
is.
Yeah, it's nice for people to say, Well,
I'm rewilding my gut buyer and by eating
soil or whatever. You know, I probably did
that as a kid, you probably did as
well. But, you know, when we're talking about
(22:56):
it, and as a conservation approach, I think
we need to be pretty clear as to
what that is.
And
I mean, yes, it's it's a great word
in some respects in that, you know, it's
got
the public imagination.
It's also wound some people up as well.
It was, it's not, it's not universally light.
And And to be honest, I'm not awfully
(23:17):
keen on it because the rebate
has been a bit of a fostered hostage
to fortune, and a lot of people say,
oh, we can't turn the clock back in
the two thousand years or whatever. I said,
well, that's not what it's really about. It's
a forward looking
approach.
So, you know, maybe wilding or nature led
ecosystems
or whatever. I don't know. But,
you know, we came up with a a
(23:39):
sort of a simple model which explains the
distinction between
ecological restoration
and rewilding, and that we say that
ecological restoration
is human led nature enabled.
So in other words, it's it's us
using, you know, net nature based approaches
to achieve a particular
(24:01):
outcome, you know, and whether that if that's
been a restoration of coral reef, or it's
river restoration or whatever.
We're using
nature based solutions to achieve a particular
desired outcome.
Rewilding flips that on its head, and we
say that rewilding
is
nature led,
human enabled. So it's nature
(24:23):
determining,
it's still an ecological
trajectory, and it's
us having the humility and the far sight
to actually give it the space and indeed
the time to allow it to do that.
So it doesn't we don't have a set
an outcome from rewilding. It's it's it's kind
of a you know, it's an open ended
process in that respect.
(24:43):
We And you scientists hate those things.
Those are not conducive to you know? But
it's also it's just really hard to
you you want it to mean what you
just said
without saying what you just said.
Just one word could do that.
And then there was a lot of fighting.
There's fighting constantly to this day over the
(25:05):
idea of wilderness,
whether Satan's wilderness can be wild. What are
you talking about? Pre industrial. You know, all
of those arguments. And I saw the same
arguments over rewilding. And then the whole move
to say, well, let's come up with something
else that makes that happen. And
and so I don't know. I think that
speaks of wildness in our language, in our
(25:26):
ability to communicate.
But, you know, and, you know, I'll I'll
quote, Tony Sinclair here in the chat that,
you know, if a thing be it restoration
or rewilding,
you know, term rather, you know, applies to
everything, then it also means nothing. Right. So
we can't call everything rewilding,
even if we are, You know? And it's
(25:47):
it's a very
there's a a particular famous rewilding project that
calls itself a rewilding project in in The
UK,
and they wrote a big book recently called
The Book of Wilding. And in there, they
said, oh, you you can even rewild your
window box. You know? I think, well, maybe
you can't. You know?
Yeah.
It's, you know, I think that's that's taking
(26:08):
things to, you know, silly extreme.
You know, it needs to happen at scale.
It needs to be connected. It needs to
be nature led.
All of those things
that is as I said earlier, it's it's
not it's it's not the the only solution.
You know, I think, you know, there's a
room for traditional conservation. There's a room for
ecological restoration.
(26:29):
There's room for nature, high nature value farming,
as we call it, or regenerative agriculture,
all of those things have a place,
you know, and that's when we've come back
to that question about
it being place based and participatory.
You know, these things happen in space and
time,
particular location, and that gives it context, you
(26:49):
know, be that political or cultural or geographical
or,
you know, ecological
context.
And we you know, rewilding needs to be
cognizant of all of those things and and,
you know, only apply rewilding
and the rewilding
term
where it is appropriate to do so.
So
(27:10):
what if an organization
who will remain anonymous
gets lots and lots of emails
from people
who don't understand
what you're talking about here today, the scale,
the scope, the principles Mhmm.
Of rewilding, and they are
they have just
inherited 75 acres, and they don't want to
(27:31):
do what their parents did with it. They
want to rewild it. Maybe 75 acres fits
in the plan, but some people also write
us about
backyard level stuff, which sort of screams
the window box thing a little bit. Just
a little bit. Yeah. But if everybody did
it,
then there would be economies of scale. You
know? Those Yeah.
(27:52):
100,000,
you know, million backyards, whatever, all doing,
you know, kind of
rewilding things. So instead of applying the glyphosate
and, you know, weeding out everything all of
the time, then, you know, letting,
nature take its course a little bit more.
You know? And I do that in my
little tiny little bit of The UK. I
don't cut my lawn
(28:13):
And, until my my my wife sort of
starts nagging me, you really ought to cut
that because it's starting to look too messy.
So I'll cut it maybe twice a year
now.
I wouldn't call it rewilding. You know, it's
great for the pollinators
and and, you know, maybe some of the
local wildlife, but, yeah, it's not really rewilding.
But if everybody did it,
then It would be. Well, which Yeah. It
(28:34):
kind of started
one of the biggest growth sectors in America
is the American lawn, and it's like 40,000,000
acres,
you know, total under
a foreign
invasive species
with absolutely
no biological diversity whatsoever,
and it's basically peer pressure from our ancestors.
(28:55):
Dead people are still telling us we need
to have green manicured lawns, and everyone is
practically everyone is listening
to that old outdated advice,
and while they begrudgingly
go out every week and mow it, they
don't want to and use all of their
water
to keep it watered. And
so, yeah, I mean that's a real patchwork.
(29:16):
We can't get more patchy than just neighborhood
backyards, and at the same time
if birds can jump from place to place
and there are enough of those little places
to get them along their way on their
vast migration route, that has to mean something
if you could develop a movement around it.
Yeah. The biodiversity
gains would be great. Well, it could be
(29:37):
massive. Going back to your 75 acres, you
know, there's nothing wrong with, you know, doing
you know, I'd love 75 acres. Thank you
very much, and I'll do something similar. You
know, it
but it again, you know, it's about where
that sits in the wider landscape
context. You know? If there's then you know?
So going back, you know, really far back
(29:58):
again in our conversation to the three c's,
you know, cars, corridors, and carnivores, you know,
there's there's there's, you know, when you start
to
idealize,
create a little cartoon of that
in a different types of corridors.
So, you know, some of them might be
landscape corridors, riparian corridors, mountain corridors, whatever. But
some might just be stepping stone corridors where
(30:20):
species can move quickly from one
stepping stone to a next, and, get across
a a landscape which is, you know, otherwise
farmed and developed just by, you know, taking
those little jumps like you would on a
chessboard.
And so that's where I think the smaller
projects
can have a role
(30:41):
is bridging the gaps between the larger core
areas where,
you know, landscape corridors are just simply not
possible,
you know, because it's an intensive agricultural
land or whatever.
Then the small scale stuff
can play a really big role,
but it needs to be taken and seen
(31:01):
in that wider landscape setting.
What if we get what if we looked
at it as flyway enrichment? There's another form
of connectivity, and it's in the air above
our heads, and it's migration routes for
for species that find it much, much easier
to jump from one thing to another. They
can fly over the highways. They can fly
over the cities, and, hopefully,
(31:22):
they mostly get through without bashing in the
windows. But,
you know, they have they have it better
in that way. Yeah. And what if we
we we were enriching on the ground in
little spots here and there? It would be
highly
important. That's
a good example. I mean, you know, mammals
can still do without those jumps, but, you
know, obviously, for a bird species, it's easier.
(31:42):
You know, there are still some barriers to
bird migration, particularly in Europe where,
you know, some people like to shoot small
birds, you know, and the on the migration
routes, you know, and they'll wait for them
coming and and and shoot them on migration.
So there are still some human barriers there
regardless of the landscape
barriers. But, yeah, I get the point, is
that it's easier for bird species than it
(32:04):
is perhaps a mammal mammalian species.
But, you know, then also you got the,
you know, the the the floristic species as
well. They need to be able to, you
know, shift particularly in this, as climate changes,
they need to shift north, south, you know,
maybe up and down the mountain.
And so connectivity is also important for, for
plants as well as well as for animals.
(32:26):
Yeah. I was just thinking about a story
that Dave Foreman liked to tell about
to kinda put a head on that whole
people like to shoot.
And other people might think well that can't
be very successful in any way, but I
would bring up the passenger pigeon.
And that's exactly how it went from blacking
out the sky for hours and even days
(32:49):
and the big flocks
to nothing, to extinction. And that was precisely
and only because of
one thing, what you just described. So we
are pretty powerful
even when it seems like, oh, that just
seems like a hobby or, you know, we
have made it not a hobby before, but
an effective extinction machine.
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm afraid in The UK,
(33:09):
there's a very strong,
you know, game bird lobby, which
has a particular
take on things, which and they they do
not almost to
a man. They do and it's mostly man.
Do not like rewilding
because it's seen as a a a real
you know, a force
for relinquishing
control
(33:31):
over
habitats and species,
which they will
profess to be protecting.
They're interested in protecting their game birds. Yeah.
But, you know, they will use
the happy coincidences
of other species benefiting from game bird management
as a stick to beat the rewilding
(33:51):
movement with, you know, saying, hey. Look what
we're doing.
Yeah. It's always to protect what they
are really interested in and and not
what they're saying on their brochures. It's never
what they're saying on the brochure. Yeah. So
in The UK, we release we, as a
nation,
the game industry
releases
(34:11):
50 plus million
game birds a year into the English landscape,
the British landscape.
And that's a biomass which is greater than
all of the breeding other breeding birds put
together.
You know, it's largely,
ringneck pheasants and, red legged partridge.
I was a bit surprised to find out,
actually, from Tom Opray, as I mentioned earlier,
that,
(34:32):
there is, pheasant shoots in in in The
US as well. So
it's not restricted to the, UK by any
stretch of the imagination.
Yeah. It's really, really hard to get over
some cultural
things that we adopted
hundreds of years ago.
Mhmm. They still seem to be going so
strong.
And
(34:52):
but at the same time, they seem completely
outdated in this
new landscape, this new world we find ourselves
in.
And I think there's some tension there that
makes them desperately cloy to this idea that
we have to have this. It's a tradition.
It's a
I don't know. I I can't put myself
in their heads. I cannot fathom what it's
like to be that obsessed with killing birds.
(35:14):
But,
it's something to deal with, and it's something
to take seriously because it is definitely happening,
and they are definitely that good at trying
to protect their
their what they see as their turf.
Yep. Absolutely.
Well, I wanted to talk a little bit
to wrap up here about the future. What
are you excited about?
(35:35):
It's a very, very difficult question to ask
on this podcast lately
because I never know what I'm gonna get
from the other side. Yeah. But, well, where
are the shiny spots that you hold on
to and you remember when you hear bad
news, you still got those shiny spots on
the map that, make you happy, make you
proud, and hopeful?
Yeah. I I think,
(35:56):
well, certainly from a UK context, you know,
there are some really interesting projects getting moving.
You know, we've
we've got a problem in The UK with,
you know, we've got a very truncated
biotic pyramid. You know, the the our largest
mammalian predator is probably a fox or a
badger.
Our largest
(36:17):
avian predator where we've reintroduced,
white tailed eagles or sea eagles
to,
to The UK.
We've got killer whales starting to come back,
hawkers. And so those are all,
you know, bright spots. But back to the
mammalian
predators,
you know, we have a an overpopulation
of deer species because they don't have any
(36:39):
natural predators
other than ourselves.
And that,
as a hobby, it's very different from in
the in The US. It's very
controlled.
You know, you can't just go and, you
know, take your ticket and shoot a deer
and put it in the freezer in The
UK. You know, you've gotta have access to
land,
and know the right people and to do
(37:00):
that. So we don't have that, you know,
hunting culture.
So, you know, I'm kind of excited by
the idea that we might be on the
cusp of of reintroducing
links
back into The UK.
You know, I I it was so close
a few years ago with one of the
previous governments.
It was almost signed off on until somebody
(37:21):
oh, I can't name names, put raised their
head, and it got, it got quashed. But
I think we're close. I'm
I'm hopeful before I'm pushing up the day
daisies that I'll see links back in The
UK.
Wolves forget it. I quite often say that
we you know, we're a small island nation
with a small island mentality.
And even though
(37:41):
The UK and Ireland
are the only two major European countries without
a breeding wolf population,
you know, because of our island status,
we would have
to consciously reintroduce them. And I just don't
see that happening.
But, you know, the bright spots, as I
say, were these, you know, these great projects
involving some, you know, really wonderful and committed
(38:03):
people,
who, you know, doing all the good things.
But, yeah, you're right. There are so many
so many depressing stories. But, you know, rewilding's
a you know, it's, it's a more optimistic
view of nature conservation.
And so, you know, I'll keep pushing at
that door if you don't mind.
Do you feel do you feel thankful that
you are are part of this area of
(38:26):
conservation
because
it is,
by definition,
a hopeful view
of possibility and the future? I mean, what
would we do if we were out there
in any other part of the conservation movement
that didn't have I mean, it was always
front lines. It's always bad things happening, and
it doesn't mean that we're hiding behind it,
(38:47):
but it it's nice to focus on a
topic that has power, that has the ability
to really do something even if it's being
completely restricted or somewhat restricted now.
Yeah. I know the old sort of thought
as conservation is always sort of fighting a
rear guard. You know? Either
conservation areas are shrinking and although they're in
growing in number worldwide, you know, they're a
(39:09):
lot of them are just paper parks.
And so, you know, it's yeah. You're right.
It's it's quite a depressing sort of
view, you know, biodiversity
loss and climate change and all the rest
of it.
But, you know, rewilding has the potential
to bend the curve
and, you know, change that, trajectory
or at least level it out a bit.
(39:31):
And so, yeah, I mean, I'm, you know,
immensely proud to have been involved in that
at one level, as I was saying. And
I've, you know, I'm, you know, got a
huge team of people that I owe a
lot of gratitude to. And as I say,
I mean, somebody have to have their name
first. I don't know why it was me.
I never put my name forward to do
it.
But, you know, maybe c beginning of the
(39:52):
alphabet helps.
But,
yeah. Which has been your plan since birth,
isn't it? I mean, you put myself at
the front of the alphabet.
I would be called Aaron a Aardmark, the
quote, the quote copy of 2,000 AD comic
from many years ago.
No.
Yeah. So immensely proud to have been involved
and, and humbled to be to have worked
(40:13):
with a really great set of people.
But, yeah, I just I'm fully aware of
the fact that all I've done is draw
some maps and write some documents.
It's the people who have been
utilising
that information
and, you know, looking at these guidelines and
and those guiding principles and principles and going,
hey. You know what? This is what we're
(40:34):
doing. This is how we're gonna do it.
And it's those people who are,
you know, kinda doing stuff on the ground.
You know, if I was a rich person
and I'd I'd put my money into, you
know, doing this on some land that I
own, but I'm not. So I'm I'm kind
of forced into, you know, providing,
some of that top level thinking, you know,
at a global scale and and then down
(40:56):
regional and local to help people who do
have
the resources,
the land,
the time to do it, to give them
a hand.
Well, I don't I'm gonna push back on
you. You're being far too humble. You,
of course, maps are just a way of
telling a story about a landscape, and you
(41:16):
are
probably, I would put at the top of
your list of things, a storyteller,
a quite good one. And we need people
who can communicate
these issues
and the need and and, the complexities
like you. So you stand out as an
example in the world
as someone who can do that, and it's
too rare right now. And I'm always encouraging
(41:39):
people to, you know, think of themselves as
as people who have stories to tell. The
work that you do cannot just be submitted
papers and
and things like that. It has to be
to turn around and face the world and
go, here's why here's what I've learned. Here's
why it's important.
And those are all the science communicators, all
of the conservation communicators,
(41:59):
as few as I think they are. I
hope that they're growing, and I hope they
use you as an example, one example,
of how that could be possible and what
that might look like for them. So
thank you for all your work, and, also,
thank you for taking the time being here
today. It was really a good timing. You
said the students were having their reading week,
so we couldn't even have picked a better
(42:20):
time.
Absolutely not. Yeah. Awesome. Jack. Thank you, Steve.
Yep. Appreciate it. And, yeah, good luck in
the future.
Thanks for listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast.
We do what we do because of you.
This podcast is supported by listeners like you
who long to live in a wilder world.
Please consider donating at rewilding.org
(42:40):
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To listen to past episodes, go to rewilding.org/pod.
That's rewilding.org/pod.
Ecological restoration
is human led nature enabled.
So in other words, it's us
using
nature based approaches
to achieve a particular
outcome. And whether that if that's restoration of
coral reef or it's river restoration or whatever,
we're using
nature based solutions to achieve a particular
(00:27):
desired outcome.
Rewilding flips that on its head, and we
say that rewilding
is
nature led, human enabled. So it's nature
determining
its own ecological trajectory, and it's us having
the humility and the far sight to actually
give it the space and indeed the time
(00:48):
to allow it to do that.
So it doesn't we don't have a set
outcome from rewilding. It's an open ended process
in that respect.
(01:27):
You're listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast.
I'm your host, Jack Humphrey.
What does rewilding mean on a global scale,
and how do we implement rewilding projects across
a wide variety of different geographic, cultural, and
political constraints?
To guide us through this intricate landscape is
doctor Steve Carver, a professor from the University
(01:47):
of Leeds School of Geography and the co
chair of IUCN's
Rewilding Thematic Group.
For nearly a decade, Steve and his colleagues
have led a global effort on behalf of
the IUCN
to define what rewilding actually is.
The result is a landmark paper, Guiding Principles
for Rewilding in Conservation Biology, and the New
Comprehensive IUCN Guidelines.
(02:09):
It's a discussion about scale, connectivity,
coexistence,
and the ultimate hopeful future of wildness. We
begin with Steve giving us some background to
lay the foundation for today's conversation.
We produced a paper back in 2021,
which, has got quite a lot of traction.
It was called guiding principles for rewilding
(02:30):
and conservation biology. And there's some big names
on that paper, not just in Europe, North
America, but elsewhere.
Yeah. That set out 10 guiding principles for
rewilding and a definition.
And it came off the back of a
request from
the IUCN,
the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
And, you know, that's made up of a
(02:50):
series of pillars, and it was the Commission
for Ecosystem Management that asked us to set
up a rewilding task was
to really kind of
bottom out what
rewilding
is about, you know, come up with a
an attempt, anyway, at least, a a unifying
definition
and a set of guiding principles.
And so that's what we did.
(03:12):
You know, that was based around
a,
a survey
of,
you know, some of the leading names, thinkers
on rewilding
and, you know, pioneers,
a survey of
the principles that had been already written down
by a bunch of organizations
that were doing rewilding,
and then a whole series of workshops. And
(03:33):
I think we've reached out to well over
a 100 people
and, organizations
in coming up with the definition and the
principles.
And that's kinda rolled over into the document
that was published last month at the,
World Conservation Congress in Abu Dhabi,
which is this,
you know, guidelines for rewilding document.
(03:55):
So, yeah, it's been a long time coming.
It's kind of eight years in the making.
We're now a a rewilding
thematic group, so we're now permanent.
And is it just, you know, before we
we we lose sight of the fact, you
know, I'm I'm here with you today, which
is great, but there's a whole bunch of
other people behind this. You know, my colleagues
in the core
group of the rewilding thematic group, but all
(04:17):
of the people have contributed.
You know, I'm just I'm just a I'm
just a secretary in many senses of the
word, and I get my name on the
paper first.
You're too humble. And and the first question
that I really have from that is,
how would you characterize the need for
guidelines? Was it that chaotic before we started
(04:39):
to organize ourselves
internationally
around
rewilding? Because in North America, we thought we
had it pretty well defined, but it was
a very North American rewilding at the same
time.
Bringing up differences between different countries is
gets confusing. Yeah. I think I mean, I
to be honest, I think you you probably
did nail down the ecological principles pretty well.
(05:01):
But I think what we need to recognize
is that,
you know, rewilding is very much a place
based in a participatory
outlook on,
you know, approaches to conservation.
And,
you know, and I think
that's what changes as you move it around
the world. You know, we've written, you know,
papers about
(05:21):
comparing and contrasting North America with Europe, for
example. I mean, I'm you know, sat in
Yorkshire, England.
And, you know, it's a very different thing.
Yes. The ecological principles
are, you know, uniform.
You know, it's they apply wherever you are.
However, it's how you then apply those where
you've got to be
cognizant cognizant of the fact that, you know,
(05:42):
different cultures, you know, different legal systems,
all of that will mean, you know, big
differences in how it's actually implemented and applied.
It's it was a tough task, I would
imagine. It it it's tricky. Yeah. I mean,
inevitably, we've we've had to generalize.
But, you know, going back to what your
comment about, you know, it was a bit
chaotic,
in terms of having
(06:03):
rewilding as a as a concept and as
approach was then being
applied
in different situations globally. You know, a lot
of people say, well well, what is he?
You know?
And, you know, Dolly Jorgensen wrote a, you
know, a quite an influential paper back in
2015
and, you know, called rewilding a plastic term.
You know? It it became molded to whatever
(06:25):
people wanted it to be.
You know? Yeah. Okay. We've got this kind
of general idea that the ecological,
you know, giving giving,
well, as we call it, you know, giving
nature the space and the time to determine
its own ecological trajectory, you know? That that
comes with some baggage depending on on where
you are in the world. You know, we
say it's got to be
(06:46):
it's got to be context specific.
What would you say is the single most
important principle that policymakers
and the public, wherever they are in the
world, need to understand from this work?
Well, as I I think it's you know,
the fact that, you know, rewilding is is,
is nature led. You know, it's about functional
ecological restoration,
(07:06):
and it's about scale
as well. You know, we aspire when we're
looking at rewilding for
to think about large scale restoration
through landscape scale planning.
And that, you know, then brings in some
of these political issues about land ownership and
land management
and collaboration
across, you know, large areas. And a lot
(07:26):
of people, you know, particularly in Europe and
particularly in The UK, are are doing very
small scale stuff.
And I think it's just that realization
that, you know, what we're talking about here
is is large scale,
you know, giving space back to nature.
And, you know, if if if you forget
that, then you're somehow missing the point with
rewilding.
You deal a lot in space. You do
(07:48):
a lot of mapping work, and that's what
you were
well known for before you took on this
project, and
that's an issue. When you start mixing in
the politics, land ownership, and everything else,
when when you hear people talk about 30
by thirty
and fifty by 50
and these very, very lofty goals, considering also
(08:08):
the global political climate seems to be tending
away from what we would like it to
do Uh-huh. To hit those goals,
that combined with the space and everything else,
I mean, that's the GIS thing. Right? Yeah.
That's right. Yeah. I've been
doing chewing away at the the problem of
identifying and defining
(08:29):
and and modeling
wilderness quality, wilderness character for many years now.
And it just seemed a natural progression to
to move into looking at opportunities for rewilding
in terms of you you know, you're right.
You know, the the UN's Global Biodiversity Forum,
Kumen Montreal Agreement has this, you know, these
30% targets, the 30 by 30 vision.
(08:51):
You know, one that I think it's target,
target two says we got to
restore. And if you call you know, wanna
call that rewilding, but restore 30% of degraded
land, sea, and water,
across the planet. And then there's target three,
which says, you know, protect
30% of land, sea, and water for hard
biodiversity
(09:12):
nature.
And that's you know, those are great targets.
They're not quite the 50% of how, nature
needs half or half earth projects, but, you
know, they're good starting points. And and these
the target for this is 2030.
So that's, you know, that's less than five
years away.
And,
yeah, it's tricky to see how we might
meet reach those. But as a geographer, the
(09:33):
question I always have is, yeah, great. You
know? But where?
It's easy for, you know, large countries with
large areas of, you know,
pretty empty I'm talking about empty as in
terms of human terms,
landscapes like, you know, Canada or whatever
to and I think using a European example,
you know, the the Scandi states,
(09:54):
so Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland,
very easy for them to identify 30%.
But it's it's a tricky proposition for some
of the smaller,
more densely populated countries like England,
or Belgium or the other lowland countries in
Europe.
I think a better approach
would be to look at it in terms
(10:17):
of biomes, ecological,
areas across whichever region we're looking at. And
so we wrote a paper for the World
Wilderness Congress
last year
where we we'd already mapped wilderness quality in
Europe, version two of that, across Continental Europe.
And we started to sort of slice it
up based on these 30 by 30 targets
(10:38):
and say, well, you know, where is the
top 30%
wildest landscape in in Europe? And if we
were thinking about targeting areas for rewilding,
that might seem reasonable.
However, it's very biased towards the, you know,
the high altitude, high latitude areas that could
do that.
Rocks and ice, Dave called it. Absa yeah.
(10:59):
Absolutely. As you would expect. So that's kinda
missing the point. I mean, but there's a
there's we sliced it up politically as well.
So we also said, okay. Where's the top
30 on a country by country basis?
And, of course, in doing that, you've got
a lot of small smallish countries in in
in Europe. You suddenly increase the area, which
if you're taking the total area of Europe,
suddenly increase the area somewhat
(11:20):
that's covered by these 30 by 30 targets.
But then you think, well, actually, this is
missing the point entirely is where,
I think it was Leopold that said, you
know, the first rule of intelligent tinkering is,
you know, keep all the parts. Mhmm. There's
somebody who tinkers with old British motorcycles. I've
I've fully ascribed to that, that mantra.
So why not, you know, why not look
(11:42):
for the top 30%
on a, you know, sort of European biome
level?
And then then you get a really interesting
image out, which I think is a more,
you know, ecologically
sound way forward.
Because you then come back to the problems
of, political geographies because a lot of these
areas that, you know, you're dealing with transboundary
(12:02):
conservation, of course. Yeah.
You know, you've got the tricky issue of
how you coordinate
across national boundaries,
international boundaries
to achieve those aims. And, you know, as
we started talking about that, you know, the
world is not a particularly,
you know, a place which where everybody's speaking
on the same
(12:23):
singing from the same English English sheet at
the moment, politically speaking at least. Yeah.
It is it does seem like a club,
you know, just hitting something over the head
with a we just need 30%.
When you bring up the biomes, and and
there are places I mean, you could get
to 30%
in, like,
in Nevada
(12:44):
Mhmm. The state. And and that 30%
would do
next to nothing for,
you know,
biological diversity compared to
going to all the hot spots.
Yeah. I I wonder and this is a
this is a huge problem for you map
guys because when you get on audio podcasts,
the very best thing that you can do
(13:05):
to demonstrate your work is That's right. Show
a map. Look at this picture. Yeah. But
you but you've also been aware of this
problem for quite some time, and it's probably
made you really good at explaining
what you're saying what what what they you'd
otherwise be seeing. Like, I'm really interested in,
you know, what would an overlay look like
when you went from just 30%
(13:26):
to Uh-huh. The biomes?
How did those two maps look different?
Well, as I said, the the the original
map looks, you know, like we're looking at
the the Nolovin Climbs and the high altitude
areas. There's very strong altitudinal
and latitudinal
bias
to the top 30% in Europe,
if you took Europe as a whole. So
(13:48):
you've got all of the northern areas of
Northern Finland and Norway and Sweden, Iceland,
very well represented.
And in the northern areas, of course, we
included,
Russia up to the, Urals.
And all of the, high altitude areas are
nicely represented. So the Alps, the Pyrenees, the
Carpathians,
(14:09):
etcetera.
As soon as you change that to country
level,
you know, the
you still see that in microcosm. So it's
the the high altitude, high latitude areas where,
you know, those countries are represented,
they're standing out. But then you see some
very
broken fragmented
(14:29):
patterns in countries which are
low lying, relatively highly populated,
densely populated,
you know, countries like Belgium and things, very
sort of fragmented pattern.
Soon as you then sort of think, well,
okay. Let's take identify the top 30%
via biome,
then the pattern changes again entirely.
(14:51):
Yes. You've still got those well, if you
think about it, you know, those classic
school Atlas images of all of the different
worlds, different biomes,
then you start seeing, you know, the top
30%
within those. And that's when it starts to
get interesting, and it's really tricky to
describe without having a map in front of
us. But,
(15:11):
yeah, it's it's problematic.
And, of course, the problem with that is
that
all of the areas where
we as humans have been able to exploit,
particularly for agriculture, but also latterly for forestry
and for fisheries and for other natural resources.
Those have been, you know, heavily exploited. So
(15:32):
the
lowland, savannah, and, temperate,
woodland
landscapes, all of them have been easy to
occupy
and to exploit. You know, if you're thinking
about human appropriation of net primary productivity,
that's, you know, the the stuff that we
can extract from essentially soil and and other
(15:53):
other resources
where we've been able to grow food. And
so Yeah. Wild areas are mess immensely underrepresented
in the fertile areas, the areas which were
easy to farm and to settle.
And so that's why that image looking at
the top 30% of the different biomes is
quite interesting, particularly when you look at those
(16:15):
biomes where we've been able to, you know,
easily farm and and to settle.
It's somewhat predictable.
I mean, I I don't think that you
probably were too surprised by the results of
looking at it that way, but it's also
sad because it puts rewilding on that map
in that context. It puts rewilding in direct
opposition to human
(16:36):
progress.
You know? It's like we take all the
good stuff, and we're like, where's all the
good stuff? And it's like, well, you're standing
on where it formerly existed.
And Indeed. And that's the case probably with
these maps is that this they show very
clearly that problem.
Yeah. And I say that's why when you
get into those landscapes
where we have appropriated
(16:57):
that, you know, productivity
for growing food, you know? And don't get
me wrong. We need to feed ourselves. So,
you know, when people quite often round on
me saying, oh, you wanna rewild everywhere? I
said, no. We don't. I'm as fond of
some food as well that the next person.
So, you know, it's a it's a question
of, you know, going back to 30%. It's
it's where appropriate and where possible.
(17:19):
But it is it is
as you say, it's kinda sad that it's
gonna be really difficult to think about rewilding
and giving nature
some space back
in those areas which
are easily farmed,
or, you know, more productive land. So if
you just take The UK, for example, you
know, a lot of our rewilding
(17:40):
efforts
are really focused on
the,
low grade agricultural land. You know, so, you
know, like The US, we have a land
capability system, which, you know, puts grade one
agricultural land, you know, which is great for
growing high value horticultural
products,
fruit and veggies, for example.
And grade two land's great for arable, you
(18:01):
know, for growing, grain crops.
Grade three is great for grazing, you know,
for milk production and and beef cattle, etcetera.
Grade four, you start to get into marginal
land where, you know, production is largely
dependent on government subsidies for it to turn
a profit. And then grade five, grade six,
you know, you you can't really do much
(18:23):
on that except a bit of forestry, bit
of kind of rough grazing,
and recreation.
So it naturally
rewilding finds its home in some of these
more marginal landscapes.
And that just makes it really fragmented and
difficult to see how you can maintain connectivity
in a representative
set of ecosystems
(18:43):
across a continent like Europe, indeed The US,
for example,
you know, where much of the productive land
has fallen under the hoof and the plow.
Which I think it's pretty
obvious why we needed to add another c
to the three c's.
And that is coexistence
because I don't see how you get two
(19:04):
rewilding goals in these very tight,
delicate
areas and and situations and cultures and politics
without
a really big
focus on coexistence.
Yeah. And, you know, that's
that's why we need that really big shared
vision and common common set of principles at
(19:25):
a global level. You know, it it's
I just don't see that happening. Unfortunately, I
don't want to be pessimistic. But I see
a lot of good stuff going on at
a sort of an individual country level and
individual,
you know, philanthropic
type projects and what have you. But I
just don't see that global cooperation,
(19:45):
what's necessary
to, you know, produce these big wins,
you know, for shared vision, set of common
principles, you know, which we've got now. But,
you know, do you see those being applied
at a global level? Well, yeah, I can't
see that at the moment. You know, don't
get me wrong again. You know, there are
some good, projects outlined, like the global rewilding
(20:06):
alliance, you know, pushing on this door.
But, yeah, it is a it is a
tool for global sustainability. And if we get
it right, then I I see there's hope.
But if we don't,
and, you know, and how many wakes the
world go round it,
it's also a great, source of inertia for
any of this kind of forward thinking.
It's also not made any easier by rewilding
(20:28):
being such a popular term that people are
using it for gut biome,
ebook sales,
men beating their chests and playing drums in
the woods,
and calling Rice sauces.
Yes. Yes. I mean, the rice sauce calls
rewilding.
I mean, it is a fantastic word. It's
one of the best words that humanity has
(20:48):
ever come up with, but,
yeah, it is you know, and that's why
I wanted to talk to you because you
are part of a team that tried to
make sense of it all, and in a
way that would make it make sense as
best possible
for anyone trying to understand how they might
implement something in their country, in their city,
in their town,
anywhere in the world, and,
(21:10):
not a small task. And so why do
you think
is this still just way up in the
clouds?
Like, you released all of this stuff. It's
still being kinda discussed at a high level
and everything. How does it fall from where
it is to the ground
and start to become
maybe a messily applied,
(21:30):
factor in how people do rewilding in their
area?
Yeah. Well, I I think, you know, going
back to that,
you know, comment I made about Dolly Oganston's
paper about it being a plastic term. I
think this, you know, the work that we've
done has tried to,
you know, kind of solidify
that and,
remove some of that undue flexibility
(21:52):
in what is and isn't rewilding.
And so I think having a a unifying
definition,
which is kinda wordy, but it necessarily
had to be,
and a set of principles of which, you
know,
projects,
individuals,
organizations
can go down a list of principles and
(22:13):
go tick tick, maybe not, you know, or,
yeah, we aspire to that particular principle, but
we're not there yet.
I think having those set of principles
and a series of guidelines
enables people to think, is what I'm doing
rewilding, or is it something else?
And, you know, if it's regenerative agriculture or
(22:34):
if it's more traditional ecological restoration,
there's nothing wrong with that. I think, you
know, conservation needs a spectrum of approaches.
But, you know, let's be clear as to
what rewilding
is.
Yeah, it's nice for people to say, Well,
I'm rewilding my gut buyer and by eating
soil or whatever. You know, I probably did
that as a kid, you probably did as
well. But, you know, when we're talking about
(22:56):
it, and as a conservation approach, I think
we need to be pretty clear as to
what that is.
And
I mean, yes, it's it's a great word
in some respects in that, you know, it's
got
the public imagination.
It's also wound some people up as well.
It was, it's not, it's not universally light.
And And to be honest, I'm not awfully
(23:17):
keen on it because the rebate
has been a bit of a fostered hostage
to fortune, and a lot of people say,
oh, we can't turn the clock back in
the two thousand years or whatever. I said,
well, that's not what it's really about. It's
a forward looking
approach.
So, you know, maybe wilding or nature led
ecosystems
or whatever. I don't know. But,
you know, we came up with a a
(23:39):
sort of a simple model which explains the
distinction between
ecological restoration
and rewilding, and that we say that
ecological restoration
is human led nature enabled.
So in other words, it's it's us
using, you know, net nature based approaches
to achieve a particular
(24:01):
outcome, you know, and whether that if that's
been a restoration of coral reef, or it's
river restoration or whatever.
We're using
nature based solutions to achieve a particular
desired outcome.
Rewilding flips that on its head, and we
say that rewilding
is
nature led,
human enabled. So it's nature
(24:23):
determining,
it's still an ecological
trajectory, and it's
us having the humility and the far sight
to actually give it the space and indeed
the time to allow it to do that.
So it doesn't we don't have a set
an outcome from rewilding. It's it's it's kind
of a you know, it's an open ended
process in that respect.
(24:43):
We And you scientists hate those things.
Those are not conducive to you know? But
it's also it's just really hard to
you you want it to mean what you
just said
without saying what you just said.
Just one word could do that.
And then there was a lot of fighting.
There's fighting constantly to this day over the
(25:05):
idea of wilderness,
whether Satan's wilderness can be wild. What are
you talking about? Pre industrial. You know, all
of those arguments. And I saw the same
arguments over rewilding. And then the whole move
to say, well, let's come up with something
else that makes that happen. And
and so I don't know. I think that
speaks of wildness in our language, in our
(25:26):
ability to communicate.
But, you know, and, you know, I'll I'll
quote, Tony Sinclair here in the chat that,
you know, if a thing be it restoration
or rewilding,
you know, term rather, you know, applies to
everything, then it also means nothing. Right. So
we can't call everything rewilding,
even if we are, You know? And it's
(25:47):
it's a very
there's a a particular famous rewilding project that
calls itself a rewilding project in in The
UK,
and they wrote a big book recently called
The Book of Wilding. And in there, they
said, oh, you you can even rewild your
window box. You know? I think, well, maybe
you can't. You know?
Yeah.
It's, you know, I think that's that's taking
(26:08):
things to, you know, silly extreme.
You know, it needs to happen at scale.
It needs to be connected. It needs to
be nature led.
All of those things
that is as I said earlier, it's it's
not it's it's not the the only solution.
You know, I think, you know, there's a
room for traditional conservation. There's a room for
ecological restoration.
(26:29):
There's room for nature, high nature value farming,
as we call it, or regenerative agriculture,
all of those things have a place,
you know, and that's when we've come back
to that question about
it being place based and participatory.
You know, these things happen in space and
time,
particular location, and that gives it context, you
(26:49):
know, be that political or cultural or geographical
or,
you know, ecological
context.
And we you know, rewilding needs to be
cognizant of all of those things and and,
you know, only apply rewilding
and the rewilding
term
where it is appropriate to do so.
So
(27:10):
what if an organization
who will remain anonymous
gets lots and lots of emails
from people
who don't understand
what you're talking about here today, the scale,
the scope, the principles Mhmm.
Of rewilding, and they are
they have just
inherited 75 acres, and they don't want to
(27:31):
do what their parents did with it. They
want to rewild it. Maybe 75 acres fits
in the plan, but some people also write
us about
backyard level stuff, which sort of screams
the window box thing a little bit. Just
a little bit. Yeah. But if everybody did
it,
then there would be economies of scale. You
know? Those Yeah.
(27:52):
100,000,
you know, million backyards, whatever, all doing,
you know, kind of
rewilding things. So instead of applying the glyphosate
and, you know, weeding out everything all of
the time, then, you know, letting,
nature take its course a little bit more.
You know? And I do that in my
little tiny little bit of The UK. I
don't cut my lawn
(28:13):
And, until my my my wife sort of
starts nagging me, you really ought to cut
that because it's starting to look too messy.
So I'll cut it maybe twice a year
now.
I wouldn't call it rewilding. You know, it's
great for the pollinators
and and, you know, maybe some of the
local wildlife, but, yeah, it's not really rewilding.
But if everybody did it,
then It would be. Well, which Yeah. It
(28:34):
kind of started
one of the biggest growth sectors in America
is the American lawn, and it's like 40,000,000
acres,
you know, total under
a foreign
invasive species
with absolutely
no biological diversity whatsoever,
and it's basically peer pressure from our ancestors.
(28:55):
Dead people are still telling us we need
to have green manicured lawns, and everyone is
practically everyone is listening
to that old outdated advice,
and while they begrudgingly
go out every week and mow it, they
don't want to and use all of their
water
to keep it watered. And
so, yeah, I mean that's a real patchwork.
(29:16):
We can't get more patchy than just neighborhood
backyards, and at the same time
if birds can jump from place to place
and there are enough of those little places
to get them along their way on their
vast migration route, that has to mean something
if you could develop a movement around it.
Yeah. The biodiversity
gains would be great. Well, it could be
(29:37):
massive. Going back to your 75 acres, you
know, there's nothing wrong with, you know, doing
you know, I'd love 75 acres. Thank you
very much, and I'll do something similar. You
know, it
but it again, you know, it's about where
that sits in the wider landscape
context. You know? If there's then you know?
So going back, you know, really far back
(29:58):
again in our conversation to the three c's,
you know, cars, corridors, and carnivores, you know,
there's there's there's, you know, when you start
to
idealize,
create a little cartoon of that
in a different types of corridors.
So, you know, some of them might be
landscape corridors, riparian corridors, mountain corridors, whatever. But
some might just be stepping stone corridors where
(30:20):
species can move quickly from one
stepping stone to a next, and, get across
a a landscape which is, you know, otherwise
farmed and developed just by, you know, taking
those little jumps like you would on a
chessboard.
And so that's where I think the smaller
projects
can have a role
(30:41):
is bridging the gaps between the larger core
areas where,
you know, landscape corridors are just simply not
possible,
you know, because it's an intensive agricultural
land or whatever.
Then the small scale stuff
can play a really big role,
but it needs to be taken and seen
(31:01):
in that wider landscape setting.
What if we get what if we looked
at it as flyway enrichment? There's another form
of connectivity, and it's in the air above
our heads, and it's migration routes for
for species that find it much, much easier
to jump from one thing to another. They
can fly over the highways. They can fly
over the cities, and, hopefully,
(31:22):
they mostly get through without bashing in the
windows. But,
you know, they have they have it better
in that way. Yeah. And what if we
we we were enriching on the ground in
little spots here and there? It would be
highly
important. That's
a good example. I mean, you know, mammals
can still do without those jumps, but, you
know, obviously, for a bird species, it's easier.
(31:42):
You know, there are still some barriers to
bird migration, particularly in Europe where,
you know, some people like to shoot small
birds, you know, and the on the migration
routes, you know, and they'll wait for them
coming and and and shoot them on migration.
So there are still some human barriers there
regardless of the landscape
barriers. But, yeah, I get the point, is
that it's easier for bird species than it
(32:04):
is perhaps a mammal mammalian species.
But, you know, then also you got the,
you know, the the the floristic species as
well. They need to be able to, you
know, shift particularly in this, as climate changes,
they need to shift north, south, you know,
maybe up and down the mountain.
And so connectivity is also important for, for
plants as well as well as for animals.
(32:26):
Yeah. I was just thinking about a story
that Dave Foreman liked to tell about
to kinda put a head on that whole
people like to shoot.
And other people might think well that can't
be very successful in any way, but I
would bring up the passenger pigeon.
And that's exactly how it went from blacking
out the sky for hours and even days
(32:49):
and the big flocks
to nothing, to extinction. And that was precisely
and only because of
one thing, what you just described. So we
are pretty powerful
even when it seems like, oh, that just
seems like a hobby or, you know, we
have made it not a hobby before, but
an effective extinction machine.
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm afraid in The UK,
(33:09):
there's a very strong,
you know, game bird lobby, which
has a particular
take on things, which and they they do
not almost to
a man. They do and it's mostly man.
Do not like rewilding
because it's seen as a a a real
you know, a force
for relinquishing
control
(33:31):
over
habitats and species,
which they will
profess to be protecting.
They're interested in protecting their game birds. Yeah.
But, you know, they will use
the happy coincidences
of other species benefiting from game bird management
as a stick to beat the rewilding
(33:51):
movement with, you know, saying, hey. Look what
we're doing.
Yeah. It's always to protect what they
are really interested in and and not
what they're saying on their brochures. It's never
what they're saying on the brochure. Yeah. So
in The UK, we release we, as a
nation,
the game industry
releases
(34:11):
50 plus million
game birds a year into the English landscape,
the British landscape.
And that's a biomass which is greater than
all of the breeding other breeding birds put
together.
You know, it's largely,
ringneck pheasants and, red legged partridge.
I was a bit surprised to find out,
actually, from Tom Opray, as I mentioned earlier,
that,
(34:32):
there is, pheasant shoots in in in The
US as well. So
it's not restricted to the, UK by any
stretch of the imagination.
Yeah. It's really, really hard to get over
some cultural
things that we adopted
hundreds of years ago.
Mhmm. They still seem to be going so
strong.
And
(34:52):
but at the same time, they seem completely
outdated in this
new landscape, this new world we find ourselves
in.
And I think there's some tension there that
makes them desperately cloy to this idea that
we have to have this. It's a tradition.
It's a
I don't know. I I can't put myself
in their heads. I cannot fathom what it's
like to be that obsessed with killing birds.
(35:14):
But,
it's something to deal with, and it's something
to take seriously because it is definitely happening,
and they are definitely that good at trying
to protect their
their what they see as their turf.
Yep. Absolutely.
Well, I wanted to talk a little bit
to wrap up here about the future. What
are you excited about?
(35:35):
It's a very, very difficult question to ask
on this podcast lately
because I never know what I'm gonna get
from the other side. Yeah. But, well, where
are the shiny spots that you hold on
to and you remember when you hear bad
news, you still got those shiny spots on
the map that, make you happy, make you
proud, and hopeful?
Yeah. I I think,
(35:56):
well, certainly from a UK context, you know,
there are some really interesting projects getting moving.
You know, we've
we've got a problem in The UK with,
you know, we've got a very truncated
biotic pyramid. You know, the the our largest
mammalian predator is probably a fox or a
badger.
Our largest
(36:17):
avian predator where we've reintroduced,
white tailed eagles or sea eagles
to,
to The UK.
We've got killer whales starting to come back,
hawkers. And so those are all,
you know, bright spots. But back to the
mammalian
predators,
you know, we have a an overpopulation
of deer species because they don't have any
(36:39):
natural predators
other than ourselves.
And that,
as a hobby, it's very different from in
the in The US. It's very
controlled.
You know, you can't just go and, you
know, take your ticket and shoot a deer
and put it in the freezer in The
UK. You know, you've gotta have access to
land,
and know the right people and to do
(37:00):
that. So we don't have that, you know,
hunting culture.
So, you know, I'm kind of excited by
the idea that we might be on the
cusp of of reintroducing
links
back into The UK.
You know, I I it was so close
a few years ago with one of the
previous governments.
It was almost signed off on until somebody
(37:21):
oh, I can't name names, put raised their
head, and it got, it got quashed. But
I think we're close. I'm
I'm hopeful before I'm pushing up the day
daisies that I'll see links back in The
UK.
Wolves forget it. I quite often say that
we you know, we're a small island nation
with a small island mentality.
And even though
(37:41):
The UK and Ireland
are the only two major European countries without
a breeding wolf population,
you know, because of our island status,
we would have
to consciously reintroduce them. And I just don't
see that happening.
But, you know, the bright spots, as I
say, were these, you know, these great projects
involving some, you know, really wonderful and committed
(38:03):
people,
who, you know, doing all the good things.
But, yeah, you're right. There are so many
so many depressing stories. But, you know, rewilding's
a you know, it's, it's a more optimistic
view of nature conservation.
And so, you know, I'll keep pushing at
that door if you don't mind.
Do you feel do you feel thankful that
you are are part of this area of
(38:26):
conservation
because
it is,
by definition,
a hopeful view
of possibility and the future? I mean, what
would we do if we were out there
in any other part of the conservation movement
that didn't have I mean, it was always
front lines. It's always bad things happening, and
it doesn't mean that we're hiding behind it,
(38:47):
but it it's nice to focus on a
topic that has power, that has the ability
to really do something even if it's being
completely restricted or somewhat restricted now.
Yeah. I know the old sort of thought
as conservation is always sort of fighting a
rear guard. You know? Either
conservation areas are shrinking and although they're in
growing in number worldwide, you know, they're a
(39:09):
lot of them are just paper parks.
And so, you know, it's yeah. You're right.
It's it's quite a depressing sort of
view, you know, biodiversity
loss and climate change and all the rest
of it.
But, you know, rewilding has the potential
to bend the curve
and, you know, change that, trajectory
or at least level it out a bit.
(39:31):
And so, yeah, I mean, I'm, you know,
immensely proud to have been involved in that
at one level, as I was saying. And
I've, you know, I'm, you know, got a
huge team of people that I owe a
lot of gratitude to. And as I say,
I mean, somebody have to have their name
first. I don't know why it was me.
I never put my name forward to do
it.
But, you know, maybe c beginning of the
(39:52):
alphabet helps.
But,
yeah. Which has been your plan since birth,
isn't it? I mean, you put myself at
the front of the alphabet.
I would be called Aaron a Aardmark, the
quote, the quote copy of 2,000 AD comic
from many years ago.
No.
Yeah. So immensely proud to have been involved
and, and humbled to be to have worked
(40:13):
with a really great set of people.
But, yeah, I just I'm fully aware of
the fact that all I've done is draw
some maps and write some documents.
It's the people who have been
utilising
that information
and, you know, looking at these guidelines and
and those guiding principles and principles and going,
hey. You know what? This is what we're
(40:34):
doing. This is how we're gonna do it.
And it's those people who are,
you know, kinda doing stuff on the ground.
You know, if I was a rich person
and I'd I'd put my money into, you
know, doing this on some land that I
own, but I'm not. So I'm I'm kind
of forced into, you know, providing,
some of that top level thinking, you know,
at a global scale and and then down
(40:56):
regional and local to help people who do
have
the resources,
the land,
the time to do it, to give them
a hand.
Well, I don't I'm gonna push back on
you. You're being far too humble. You,
of course, maps are just a way of
telling a story about a landscape, and you
(41:16):
are
probably, I would put at the top of
your list of things, a storyteller,
a quite good one. And we need people
who can communicate
these issues
and the need and and, the complexities
like you. So you stand out as an
example in the world
as someone who can do that, and it's
too rare right now. And I'm always encouraging
(41:39):
people to, you know, think of themselves as
as people who have stories to tell. The
work that you do cannot just be submitted
papers and
and things like that. It has to be
to turn around and face the world and
go, here's why here's what I've learned. Here's
why it's important.
And those are all the science communicators, all
of the conservation communicators,
(41:59):
as few as I think they are. I
hope that they're growing, and I hope they
use you as an example, one example,
of how that could be possible and what
that might look like for them. So
thank you for all your work, and, also,
thank you for taking the time being here
today. It was really a good timing. You
said the students were having their reading week,
so we couldn't even have picked a better
(42:20):
time.
Absolutely not. Yeah. Awesome. Jack. Thank you, Steve.
Yep. Appreciate it. And, yeah, good luck in
the future.
Thanks for listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast.
We do what we do because of you.
This podcast is supported by listeners like you
who long to live in a wilder world.
Please consider donating at rewilding.org
(42:40):
and subscribe to our weekly news and article
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To listen to past episodes, go to rewilding.org/pod.
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