There probably isn’t any higher praise for ‘Wilding’ than to say that, upon finishing it, I wholeheartedly wished I could buy a farm and let it turn into a wildlife haven. The story of a rewilded Sussex farm reminded me how grateful I am to have been taught by my parents to notice and appreciate wildlife. (Even though as a child I often complained about being dragged away from my books to see a meadow of orchids.) The aptly named Isabella Tree recounts how she and her husband abandoned intensive farming, which was losing them vast amounts of money despite subsidies, and switched to encouraging biodiversity. It’s an amazing story, as the rewilding has been much more successful than anyone dared to hope. Successive chapters joyfully recount the mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, insects, fungi, and plants that sprung up once given the chance. I found this detailed case study more uplifting than George Monbiot’s [b:Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life|17160008|Feral Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life|George Monbiot|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388690343s/17160008.jpg|23584322], although I enjoyed that very much, as it demonstrates so specifically how well rural biodiversity can bounce back from a monoculture. It also suggests that the agricultural sector can evolve to support rather than undermine the environment. Tree is evangelistic about the approach she took - and justifiably so.

Of particular interest is the detailed explanation of challenges and difficulties that the project faced, some practical (how to move wild deer), some institutional (Natural England were wary), some cultural (local objections to the ‘mess’ and ‘waste’ compared to arable land), and some philosophical (allowing control of the land to lapse). Tree devotes time and careful discussion to the academic theories and popular perceptions that make rewilding especially hard to achieve in Britain, relative to other parts of Europe; George Monbiot also observed this peculiar tendency. Defining ‘wildness’ is fraught with difficulty, as is deciding which species have lived here long enough to be considered ‘native’. I found the argument that Britain was not covered in closed-canopy forest during pre-history convincing, as well as useful. Tree also points out (as I’d recently read in this Citylab article) that the changing climate is forcing species to relocate, so rather than try to replicate the past we should allow wild space to accommodate whatever species can find a niche. In short, stop over-managing for the sake of single species and instead interfere as little as possible. Counter-intuitive in such a heavily managed landscape as Britain, yet the results are incredible.

I was particularly struck by this commentary on shifting baseline syndrome within living memory:

We were familiar with the usual reaction from our own generation, the forty-to-sixty-somethings. Children of the agricultural revolution were aghast at what we were doing. The twenty-somethings were often more responsive. For them the idea of national food security, of digging for victory, was an anxiety from a bygone age. [...]

But the real surprise came from the oldest generation. Those in their eighties could remember the agricultural depression between the wars, when marginal land across the country had been abandoned… To them, clumps of dog rose and hawthorn, thickets of hazel and sallow - even swathes of ragwort - were not offensive at all. The landscape recalled them, instead, to their childhood ramblings in a countryside heaving with insects and birds, to the days when there was a covey of grey partridges in every field. There was nothing threatening or alarming in what they were seeing. Quite the reverse. To some, it was positively beautiful. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” one old boy berated his son - a baby during the war - who insisted that what they were seeing was “unnatural”. “This is how the countryside always used to look!”

I hope that in the future more of it looks this way. As a child in East Anglia, I remember vast fields of oilseed rape, with isolated snippets of uncultivated land sheltering wild species. How much more diverse, useful, and beautiful the countryside could be if our values and perceptions of land use shifted a little. The possibilities of rewilding are spectacular and I can only hope this book inspires other farmers to give it a try. ( )

The synopsis for the book made it sound like the book was going to dwell much more on the economic difficulties the Knepp estate faced in pursuing their rewilding project. That deterred me from reading the book for some time. Happily, the focuses far more on the evolution of the estate: the plants, insects, birds, and animals that are benefiting from the unmanaged approach to land ownership. This slim book provides a quick and painless education to a number of important ecological points. ( )

for myself

Must-read for any nature enthusiasts or those looking for solutions to the current worldwide problems. Slightly wordy at times but well structured and researched; an exemplary chronicle of how to improve our modern world. ( )

Interesting and a bit inspirational. But it can also be long-winded, and especially in the second half Tree uncritically presents a lot of poorly supported research. I did appreciate, though, her emphasis on the importance of habitats that are transitional, in time and in space; and on the fauna can affect ecological succession.

> Could grazing animals prevent the succession of trees on dry land, just as the geese had done in the marsh? And if we left the grazing animals to their own devices, as we had with the geese, might they, too, generate something even more interesting and more valuable in terms of biodiversity?

> Climax vegetation theory, originally propounded by the American botanist and author of Plant Succession , Frederic Clements, in 1916, and subsequently further developed by the English botanist Sir Arthur Tansley, author of The British Islands and Their Vegetation (1939), among others, throws up a further powerful psychological barrier for conservationists devising strategies for nature management. Closed-canopy forest is demonstrably species-poor compared with managed habitats like meadows, pasture, heaths and traditional farmland. ‘What it looks like, if you subscribe to the closed-canopy story,’ says Frans, ‘is that, in Europe – before we embarked on the destructive practices of modern industrial farming – man actually improved biodiversity because traditional farming and forestry practices like haymaking, pollarding and coppicing clearly sustain a much broader spectrum of habitats for wildlife than closed-canopy woodland.

> the old Sussex dialect has over thirty words for mud. There’s clodgy for a muddy field path after heavy rain; gawm – sticky, foul-smelling mud; gubber – black mud of rotting organic matter; ike – a muddy mess; pug – sticky yellow Wealdon clay; slab – the thickest type of mud; sleech – mud or river sediment used for manure; slob or slub – thick mud; slough – a muddy hole; slurry – diluted mud, saturated with so much water that it cannot drain; smeery – wet and sticky surface mud; stoach – to trample ground to mud, like cattle; stodge – thick, puddingy mud; stug – watery mud; and swank – a bog.

> Our footsteps often feel heavy. Rewilding Knepp has changed the way we look at the world and much of it is depressing. When we go for a walk with friends elsewhere in the countryside – the same walks we used to enjoy without thinking in the past – chances are what we notice most is the silence and the stillness. As the landscape flashes by on a train or motorway, we now know what isn’t there. Compared with Knepp, most of Britain seems like a desert. It brings an aching sadness, a sense of loss and frustration articulated best by the great American conservationist Aldo Leopold almost a century ago: ‘One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.’

> With the grazing animals no longer taking avermectins – the powerful wormers and parasiticides with which most domestic horses and all livestock on non-organic farms are habitually dosed – we were seeing cowpats and horse dung unlike anything we had seen outside Africa, latticed with the holes of dung beetles. For Charlie this became something of a fixation, taking him back to the bug obsessions of his childhood in Africa and Australia. He would lie next to a pile of fresh Exmoor dung and count the minutes (the record was three) that it would take for the dung beetles to arrive. Summoned by the smell and zeroing in like attack helicopters, the beetles fold their wings and plop straight into the dung. If a crust has already formed, they bounce off and then have to scamper back into it, burying themselves headfirst in nourishing excrement. Before long the kitchen counter was forested with glass vials containing all the species Charlie could find, to be dispatched to Professor Paul Buckland at Bournemouth University for identification. Triumphantly, after a summer of fecal rummaging, he had identified twenty-three species of dung beetle from a single cowpat.

> The does milling under the oak trees focus wisely on the business of loading up calories in preparation for winter. The bucks, on the other hand, will enter winter half-starved and exhausted. The weakest will die.

> The aurochs was hunted to extinction; the last died in Poland in 1627.

> All three subspecies of the European bison were hunted to extinction in the wild: Bison bonasus hungarorum from the Balkans died out in the mid-1800s, the last wild Bison bonasus bonasus was shot in Bialowieza forest on the Poland–Belarus border in 1921, and the last Bison bonasus caucasicus was shot, appropriately enough, in the north-west Caucasus in 1927. The European bison that survive today are descendants of a dozen animals held in zoos across the Continent. ( )

This is one of those books where the content overcomes the writing. The writing isn’t bad by any means, but it definitely lacks the spark of personality. Either Isabella Tree lacks anything resembling charisma, or she was holding herself back. I choose to believe the latter, because I believe anyone willing to embrace the project she and her husband embarked on has to be inherently likeable and not a little bit charismatic.

In spite of what was often bland writing, the book is a brilliant record of the amazing achievements Tree and her husband managed on what was poorly producing farmland that was losing money. By allowing it to revert back to its natural state, with as little human interference as possible, they accomplished so much on so many fronts. The wildlife recovery, the flood mitigation, the general health of the land itself – all of it happening at speeds that make me optimistic that humanity hasn’t completely destroyed our planet just yet. Lest I got too optimistic though, Tree’s documentation of the uphill battle they had to fight with government agencies who nominally existed to protect the environment put me right back into my proper, cynical, place.

Wilding is a thoroughly well researched, excellently laid out recounting of one couple’s determined efforts to restore their patch of British soil to what it was meant to be, and all the excellent rewards that came with it. The writing may be less than enthralling but the content more than makes up for any missing sparkle or wit. If you’re interested in the natural state of things, this is definitely worth the time and effort. ( )

Straight up wildlife pr0n for me. Isabella Tree certainly has a view of what a wild UK should look like—less forested than I've thought—but which is compellingly argued.

I was surprised how uncomfortable I felt at the idea of starvation culling a herd and the carcasses being left out. The lack of "land bridges" sounds like starvation is too harsh, but it does happen in "wild" Africa too. Maybe too much city in me.

Pasture-fed meat sounds like a delicious way to avoid vegetarianism. Charcuterie pony. Mmmm

At a smaller scale than Oostvaardersplassen, Knepp stirs wonder and frustration in me. Ditto the book. The tone of superiority and privilege is irritating, but bushwack through it with your head down, and nature manages to find its way through.
Mostly. (The chapter about pasture-fed meat is boringly blinkered, but without wolves and lynx, and with the gun in their place, we're stuck with this nonsense for now.)
Where the book really wins is in the actual observations, and in the honesty about funding, research, public taste and distaste about the brutality of nature - hence the shooting at Knepp, Oostvaardersplassen, Rum etc -, public vandalism, and the absence of altruism within the farming and landowning community.
A beautiful read, a painful read, and a book to keep for reference after reading it - it's good that it's been written. ( )

A frustrating, hopeful, inspiring, angry, depressing and subtly life-changing book. ( )

Their land at Knepp in West Sussex had been farmed by them and the family before, for years, but it had reached the point where the farm had become unviable as a business. Not sure what to do with the land, Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell made that decision to let nature take over again. Fences were taken up and they selected some hardy breeds of pigs, Exmoor ponies and cattle to wander freely around the 3500 acres site.

Wildlife under the modern capitalist economies is taking an absolute pounding. A recent report says that we have lost 60% of our global wildlife and figures in the UK show this too; we are ranked 29th in the world for biodiversity loss: 56% of species are in decline and 15% are threatened with extinction. The species that we used to regularly see and hear are no longer around; when did you last hear a cuckoo?

Locals objected to several elements of what they were doing, ragwort was a particular issue with some people, but slowly the recovery began on their land. Species that had plummeted in the weald, begun to return. They were finding that they were suddenly one of the top sites in the country for creatures like purple emperor butterflies and turtle doves. With an abundance of invertebrates come predators and this rippled up until they realised that they peregrine falcons back. In fact, there were several species that had appeared that were not fitting in the niche that would normally be expected.

This inspirational book shows what can be achieved in just a decade, how we can regain a wilder country. Ensuring that we put things in place to support the natural world will make the world and our own lives a richer place. We can make some attempt to reverse the devastating trend even after a decade and whilst farms might not be able to implement all of what they have done, even some of these will have a marked improvement to our natural world. ( )

one of my favorites in a long time. awesome. Fun to learn more about creatures and history of England.
Highly recommended. ( )

What an amazing book which recounts how nature-led conservation has helped reintroduce nature and wilderness back into urbanised lands, in particular at the 3,500-acre, ex-intensive farming, Knepp estate in West Sussex. A restorative balm to the soul, this book is part of the re-nature-ising narrative that is a glimmer of hope in the incessant cycle of bad news about climate change, natural disasters, environmental pollution, and species decline.

I was a bit sceptical at the beginning, not of the conservation efforts, but of the amount of privilege that seemed to be required for someone to be in a position to kickstart a conservation effort like this. Tree and her husband in inherited this massive estate: an estate that has been in the family for over two centuries, an estate that had been visited by king/s for royal hunts before then, an estate that was intensively farmed until the threat of bankruptcy and government funding for conservation stepped in. Knepp's position and indeed the Burrell name and position in the area seem to attract an amount of (free?) professional academic advice, and charitable and government help than if an "ordinary" farmer had started this.

All this, and their oversea trips (ostensibly to observe and learn from other conservation efforts but funded by who), and the unknown fates of the eleven farm employees they fired (while they themselves didn't seem to suffer financially despite apparently already being in a million pounds overdraft) added to my discomfort.

Of course this is another example of nature-restoration requiring an inordinate amount of privilege and wealth but that's got me thinking about what could I, as a still relatively-privileged individual, can do. On a much smaller and different scale closer to home, I was reminded of Wendy Whiteley's Secret Garden in Lavender Bay where she (without council approval and her own money) transformed an abandoned railway land into this lovely community greenspace.

But still, the successes of Tree and co's conservation efforts cannot be denied. They could have not decided upon conservation and the world would have been poorer in its understanding of the importance of biodiversity in rejuvenating endangered species (both flora and fauna) and neglected lands.

Now, how can this be translated to Australian landscape and animals, and what can I do to contribute? Perhaps it really is time now for me to pop over to Bunnings and finally buy that reacher-grabber I've been eyeing and start strolling the streets for litter on the weekends.

Update: An interesting Australian-drought specific type of wilding and a rewilding of the Iron Curtain and Cambridge lawn wilding. ( )

Detailed scientific book about the benefits of letting nature take its course. The moral of this story is that nature needs a combinatio if animals and vegetation to do it’s job properly. Lots of good information about the way in which modern industrial agricultural methods have depleted the soil and its produce of its natural goodness and vitality. ( )