Feral by George Monbiot
Wilding, by Isabella Tree
By Anne Kilgannon
Whew, just surfacing here to report on a journey into rewilding—begun by reading about rewilding and learning about its practices and promise for healing our broken world. It’s the best idea I’ve encountered in ages and fills me with hope and direction for the future. For a new approach, this movement has already produced several books that are classics in the making and other sources with thoughtful conversations about origins and founders that are essential to understanding the potential of rewilding and crafting programs of renewal and deepening our conservation efforts. See, for instance: https://rewilding.org and especially the first podcast on the work of founder Dave Foreman: https://rewilding.org/episode-1-dave-foreman-on-the-history-and-definition-of-rewilding/. I am still very much a beginning student but am eager to share my first discoveries.
I recall first hearing about rewilding from reading pieces by George Monbiot in The Guardian, which piqued my interest but only recently have I read his book Feral where he digs into the concept and its power to remake our home landscapes as well as our inner personal ‘scapes, which I’ll write about shortly. To begin at the beginning, “rewilding” is a term now widely accepted that was coined by Dave Foreman in the early 1990s as part of his own evolution of thought about conservation work.
Foreman had begun working in the 1970s with the Wilderness Society and then radicalized his engagement through Earth First in the next decade, and as that movement ran its course, turned to restoration of lands in the 1990s. Taking a page from Dave Brower’s catchy slogan, “Global CPR: Conserve, Protect, Restore,” Foreman dug further into ways to implement that vision. He turned from trying to save particularly endangered species to focusing his efforts on restoring what he called ecological processes—evolution at heart—which involved restoring “wildness.” The logic said, if the land and waters (including oceans) could be left alone long enough, with just some very targeted help by humans, natural processes freed from our shackles would heal the places that would then become functioning habitats. All else would follow.
The necessary inputs would be the reintroduction of keystone species—beavers and bison and prairie dogs, and predators—wolves, bears, lynx, fishers (in Washington State!), and mountain lions, that had been extirpated by humans. And sometimes even that help would not be necessary as it was discovered that wolves and wild boars and other species were filtering into areas long bereft of their presence on their own; we just had to get out of the way and stop killing them as they reappeared.
Foreman and others also worked on creating networks of what they called travelways or wildways so that animals and plants could find safe ways to spread and link up scattered populations to promote genetic diversity and replenish populations. And they pushed for new practices, laws, and rules to allow such networks to thrive, sometimes building passageways to cross roads or remove old roads entirely, or set aside undeveloped land for corridors, or removing dams to free passages up and down rivers. And sometimes, in so doing, we rewild ourselves and sweep old, crabbed concepts of life from our minds and engender larger, more free visions of what life could be. Should be, I am convinced if we are to have any life at all.
That bigger, wilder, freer life is the heart of Monbiot’s masterpiece, Feral. Published in 2014, it is evidently a work of some years’ duration. He plunges us in at the deep end immediately and takes his readers into turbulent and cold waters, up mountains, and through hard-bitten fields, dying forests, and barren deserts. But he also discovers lush landscapes of healthy rivers, deep and complex forests, and hidden gems where nothing would seem to have survived. He mostly writes about his home ground of Wales but also reports on his experiences in South America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. That sounds like a superficial whirlwind but it is more a careful examination, a stripping down to essentials, of what makes the natural world work and all we do to either encourage it to thrive or, sadly, tragically, get in the way of living systems and by our ignorance and complacency destroy those systems. (There are some head-shaking tales of British rules and regulations that will make you gasp for their bone-headedness. I’m certain we have examples aplenty here, too.)
Monbiot does not spare himself. His own beliefs and behaviors come under his exacting scrutiny; his moral compass is sent spinning when he is brought up short through revelatory experiences. His lyrical writing is full of questions and wonderings; also wonder, awe, and a deep respect for nature and its complexities. He notes the human propensity to dumb down the natural world, to simplify and strip down to a few favored species and ignore all the interactions and co-dependencies that support life. He documents again and again that rewilding is about building back with all the missing pieces; it is holistic, the opposite of our impoverished notions and scant experience of the world. He makes the reader long for what was and is ready to act to restore our diminished world.
Monbiot reminds us that natural life is intricate, tangled, and composite. It is made up of soil alive with a web of beings beyond counting, nutrients cycling through minute bodies and up the scales to plants, trees and mosses and lichens, fungi, and all who feed on them. It is water, from rain to rivers and oceans, sweeping and seeping down to roots and aspiring back to air. Modern agriculture largely ignores this complexity and substitutes a coarse chemistry and mechanized regime to wrest crops from the earth. In Isabella Tree’s farming and rewilding conversion memoir, Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm, she writes of the transformation of the family farm from an agribusiness model of “inputs” to a living, breathing—and finally flourishing—mixed farm and ecosystem that supports their animals as well as rare birdlife, butterflies, healthy trees, cleansed waterways, and some of the missing keystone species of yesteryear. The foundation is healthy soil, a great variety of plant life, water that stays on the land instead of rushing away, and a welcome mat for whatever creatures find their way there.
Isabella Tree walks us through all the aha! moments of revelation and triumphs, as well as the struggles and failures, the closed doors and frustrations of carving out a new way of life. We learn alongside her with her husband Charley; she helpfully references myriad studies, mentors, and experiences that transformed their farming practices. This book is a master class in rewilding farming and could be used beyond English shores with local knowledge and conditions swapped in, but with the inspiration and encouragement that what they have done can be won by others.
It’s an exciting look at what is possible even for non-farmers; after all, we depend on farms for our daily food, and understanding the nuances of “pasture-fed” beyond “grass-fed” or “local and seasonal” for nutritional values matters for all of us. As bird lovers, anything that improves habitat, clean water, diversity, and sanctuary for wildlife, how farming is conducted, supported by subsidies, degraded by corporate practices, or enhanced by ecological principles is of greatest import. Reading Isabella Tree is surprisingly gripping and adventurous as well as heartwarming and full of hope for our shared futures.
Rewilding is a path worthy of our exploration.
Photo credit: Tiny Fungi, by Rachel Hudson.
