The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding, Big and Small

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Knepp may be a familiar name if you follow British environmental news: it’s synonymous with what’s known as rewilding. For most of us living in cities and the suburbs, there’s advice on how we can bring nature back into the urban fabric, though this chapter seems to be mainly aimed at city planners, engineers, and architects. org/agenda/2019/10/farming-agriculture-biodiversity-wildland The values gap between those engaged in ‘rewilding, hunting, shooting and fishing’ and ‘vegan rewilders’ is, as the reviewer suggests, a potentially large one, although practitioners on both sides seem to take a pragmatic approach for the sake of their funding which often comes from the same sources.

Nevertheless what ultimately emerges is a compelling and reasoned argument in favour of incentivising more landowners to give some of their land back to nature.This book really opened my eyes even more and I learned many things despite being an ecologist and life long conservationist. If scrub becomes mature woodland, will they put their hands up and say, ‘We’ve lost our turtle doves but we’re wilders, we’re going to keep going’ or are they going to say, ‘We love our turtle dove, we’re going to do a bit more intervention’? As well as the comments one might expect about food production and biodiversity, the author enhances the story of the project with significant comment about broader issues like climate change, child-rearing, public health, mental well-being and nutrition. Part gripping memoir, part fascinating account of the ecology of our countryside, Wilding is, above all, an inspiring story of hope.

Are there species that exist thanks to human-managed habitat, and can you accept that those species might disappear? Don’t get me wrong, the overall thrust of it - the rewilding of the Knepp estate and the extraordinary increase in biodiversity there - is fascinating. In fact, it adds to it immeasurably; I'm glad a book like this exists, to provide more than just the vague theory of how to make a positive change.

If you take too much then the natural regenerative capacity of the scrub and the trees will be greater than grazing pressure and eventually, you’ll end up with closed canopy woodland” I said. Not sure what to do with the land, Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell made that decision to let nature take over again.

The book gives guidance on everything from keeping water buffalo to reducing light pollution in gardens; from preventing flooding in cities to rewilding schools. This book is, in essence, two books in one; the first half is a general guide to the appalling state of biodiversity in Britain, the causes of it, and the broad strokes of the theory of rewilding/wilding.A book like this will age quickly in such a progressive field, with the section on Biodiversity Credits in particular reading more like a PR piece.

He said Knepp showed that “the open-ended restoration of native habitat in a dynamic way has huge biodiversity and bioabundance benefits that have not been replicated anywhere else on sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) or national nature reserves or all these other alleged jewels in the crown that we’ve been trying to preserve against the tide of climate change. You can see the level of investment that has gone into the estate using the time tool in Google Earth. I learned so, so much, but my main takeaway is how beautifully and intricately interrelated every single process of the natural world is - and how perfectly it can rejuvenate itself if given half a chance.

Five Years ago, Isabella Tree's phenomenal book Wilding started a national conversation about restoring our flat-lining landscape.