LANDSCAPE / 10
A BEGINNER’S GUID
REWILDING
EURASIAN GREY WOLF © NADEZDA MURMAKOVA / 123RF
Féidhlim Harty describes how ‘rewilding’ can produce landscapes with an abundance of plant and wildlife with opportunities for people to thrive socially and economically
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e are beginning to recognise that if we don't manage our landscapes in a way that supports the natural world we may well find ourselves without all sorts of things we currently take for granted. 'Rewilding' is all about bringing nature back to life and restoring living systems and allowing nature to flourish. It’s a relatively new term, coined by conservationist and activist, Dave Foreman, and first appeared in print in 1990. He envisaged rewilding as a large-scale affair with two specific prongs: giving the land back to wildlife and giving wildlife
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back to the land: Giving the land back to wildlife involves devoting sufficient protected space to wildlife so that it can thrive, hand-in-hand with sufficient connection with other protected space to prevent genetic islands forming. Such islands (be they in an ocean, a clear cut rainforest, or small remnant of a raised bog) lead inevitably to extinctions over time if the genetic pool is too small to sustain sufficient diversity. Giving wildlife back to the land involves reintroductions of keystone species; often apex predators. We have become used to greatly denuded habitats when it comes to top
HORTICULTURECONNECTED / www.horticultureconnected.ie / Summer 2020
