Ecos 35 (3 4) entire edition low res 1

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2014 issue 35(3/4)

Wilder by Design - conference special Rewilding - only for the posh?

Community wilding in Wales

ECOS

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014

A REVIEW OF CONSERVATION ECOS is the journal of the British Association of Nature Conservationists

www.banc.org.uk ecos@easynet.co.uk

Editorial

Managing Editor: Rick Minter 07768 748301 ecos@easynet.co.uk

Who’s wild now?

Assistant Editor: Martin Spray Hillside, Aston Bridge Road, Pludds, Ruardean, Glos. GL17 9TZ 01594-861404 Acknowledgements This issue was edited by Rick Minter.

Cover photo: An ungrazed Welsh hillside becoming wooded through natural colonisation. Photo: Simon Ayres.

The opinions expressed in ECOS are not necessarily those of BANC Council or of the Editors.

ECOS may not be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, in English or other languages, without the prior written consent of the publisher, BANC.

Subscriptions/BANC membership Subscriptions for ECOS are £25 for individuals, £15 for students (pdf only), and £80 for the corporate institutional rate.

To order pdfs of specific articles or complete editions check www.banc.org.uk

President: John Bowers

Chair: Gavin Saunders

Vice-Presidents: Marion Shoard Adrian Phillips

Secretary: Alison Parfitt Treasurer: Ruth Boogert

BANC is a non profit making company limited by guarantee, registered in England No. 2136042. Registered charity No.327595

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ECOS 35(3/4) 2014

ECOS is printed by Severnprint using Cocoon Silk 300gsm cover and Cocoon uncoated 100gsm text paper. Both papers have a 100% recycled content and are FSC certified. The electricity used during printing is generated from renewable sources. The magazine is printed under the SylvaPack environmental print route using no alcohol and processless plates. Severnprint donates to Tree Aid to support tree planting in sub-Saharan Africa.

This edition of ECOS carries several articles based on talks given at the 2014 Wilder

By Design Part 1 conference. The editorial paper below addresses some of the issues raised at the event and to be continued at the September 2015, Wilder By Design Part 2 conference.

IAN D ROTHERHAM As the organisers hoped, the 2014 Wilder By Design event raised critical issues in debates on future ecologies and landscape visions. Not only were key questions presented and debated, but matters of interest and controversy were laid bare in a series of excellent presentations and discussions. It was expected that views would be strongly held and indeed, that there might be disagreements and differences publicly aired; and we were not disappointed. This selection of articles represents a cross-section of themes from the event. Full conference presentations and invited contributions will be published as a book following the 2015 conference. Some major paradigms and lines of tension were clear in the lively discussions and debates, and here I highlight some fundamental issues.

Essentially, many of us feel that conservation is failing1,2 and catastrophically, and wish to see a ‘wilder’ futurescape. It is not necessarily that the toolkit is wrong, but that it is being applied mistakenly, amateurishly, and misguidedly. However, listening to the debates, one wondered whose landscapes are these. Many proposals seem driven from the outside looking in, people separated in some way from a ‘pure’ idealistic ‘Nature’ almost harking back to the Romantics. This appears a little like the Imperialist ecological idea that the main problem for conservation in foreign countries was the natives. Get rid of them, and everything will be fine.

Local peoples and cultures are seen not as a part of Nature, but as a problem to be solved. In Scotland, many of the areas viewed as ‘wild’ were well populated, utilised landscapes back in the Bronze Age or earlier, and only lost their communities through externally imposed clearances by absentee Lairds. These lands were always wild, but they were not wilderness.

But then one wonders, is the severance between people and Nature desirable; and much detailed research indicates cultural severance to be a major environmental catastrophe.3,4 Furthermore, ideas and concepts of ‘wild’, ‘wildness’ and ‘re-wilding’ are human perceptions of the environmental condition, so is it all in the mind? Even in defining ‘the wild’ and ‘wilderness’, we are imposing human values onto the canvas of Nature. Just as the American pioneer conservationists were wrong in believing Yellowstone and other areas were indeed wild, when they were really ecocultural, do we make the same mistakes?

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Is ‘re-wilding’ a human response to a basic need to seek purity and freedom in a world dominated by human body-odour? Yet in attempting to ‘re-wild’, the intervention itself is human-driven and controlling. Is there a difference between the ecologically derived ‘scientific’ view and the geographically, spatially aware, but subjectively imposed ideas of wildness? In selecting subjective criteria for ‘wild’, does this not mean a circular argument whereby wilderness areas are those you thought were wild in the first place? For some it seems that the human perceptions of ‘wild’ and ‘Natural’ outweigh any values we might place on species and nature conservation. With the aspirations of traditional conservation dismissed in favour of free Nature to do as it may, to survive or to fail, humans can stand back and observe. However, how do we feel about upland zones of bracken, rhododendron, birch thickets, gorse, Sikta spruce and red deer? These could be exciting and sit alongside lowland recombinant communities of Himalayan Balsam, buddleia, Japanese knotweed and sycamore, and how fascinating might that be? Yet as soon as we intervene, as we cull, introduce, eradicate, cut, spray, re-plant or fence off, we are carrying out a deliberate, calculated intervention; that is not free Nature. The burden of being human in the modern world is in part responsibility for our actions, past, present and future. Ecology determines what is possible, ecological science predicts what this will be, but we decide what we want; and we intervene or not to get it. Not to intervene is itself an intervention.

5. Rotherham, I.D. (2009) Cultural Severance in Landscapes and the Causes and Consequences for Lowland Heaths. In: Rotherham, I.D. & Bradley, J. (eds.) (2009) Lowland Heaths: Ecology, History, Restoration and Management. Wildtrack Publishing, Sheffield, 130-143.

Why does wild stop at the gateways to out towns and cities? Urban landscapes are rapidly moving from the wild nature ideas of the late Oliver Gilbert and towards a new horticultural fashion. Yet Ollie’s ‘urban commons’ were nature freed and unpredictable, but populated by people. If we want urban decision-makers and taxpayers to support wilder landscapes, then surely we need to sell them the idea and on their doorsteps. Traditional commons and heaths were populated and utilised too, and created eco-cultural landscapes of immense species richness.5 Is that really so bad? A chasm appears to lie between those wishing to conserve Nature, those wanting a Nature freed from (perceived) human influences, and those desiring a Nature wilded but through grazing with primal analogue herbivores. In seeking the wild, how wilding balances with abandonment and severance, is a serious question; this especially so if wilded landscape burn, as they often do.

This major international conference organised by Professor Ian Rotherham and colleagues, is sponsored and supported by: BANC, BES, IPS, IUFRO, ESEH, Sheffield Hallam University, the Ancient Tree Forum and the Landscape Conservation Forum. It follows on from the successful event in May 2014 which covered a range of perspectives.

So I finish with the questions – Whose Nature? Whose wild? Whose vision? Who’s deciding? Who’s paying? To be continued in September 2015...

References 1. Rotherham, I.D. (2014) Eco-History: A Short History of Conservation and Biodiversity. The White Horse Press, Cambridge.

2. Rotherham, I.D. (2014) The Call of the Wild. Perceptions, history people & ecology in the emerging paradigms of wilding. ECOS, 35(1), 35-43.

3. Rotherham, I.D. (2008) The Importance of Cultural Severance in Landscape Ecology Research. In: Editors: Dupont, A. & Jacobs, H. Landscape Ecology Research Trends, Nova Science Publishers Inc., USA, Chapter 4, pp 71-87.

4. Rotherham, I.D. (ed.) (2013) Cultural Severance and the Environment: The Ending of Traditional and Customary Practice on Commons and Landscapes Managed in Common. Springer, Dordrecht.

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Ian D. Rotherham is Professor of Environmental Geography and Reader in Tourism & Environmental Change in the Department of the Natural & Built Environment, Sheffield Hallam University. i.d.rotherham@shu.ac.uk

Wilder by Design? Part 2 Managing landscape change and future ecologies 9 to 11 September 2015 at Sheffield Showroom & Workstation, Sheffield, UK

In 2015, the themes will be expanded to look critically at projects, issues and perspectives from across the world as well as in the UK. The conference will examine concepts of cultural severance and the nature of eco-cultural landscapes as well as addressing critical issues around (re) wilding in both rural and urban situations. The paradigms of wilder landscapes and the interactions between nature and culture, between history and ecology, and between climate, people and nature, will make for a continuing and rich discussion.

Speakers already confirmed include Adrian Newton, Alastair Driver, Peter Bridgewater, Ted Green, Keith Alexander, Jill Butler, Della Hooke, Rob Lambert, George Peterken, Peter Taylor, Sue Everett, Chris Spray, Tomasz Samojlik, Kenneth Olwig, Frans Vera and Tom Williamson. Chris and Anne-Marie Smout will be attending as guests of honour.

The conference will include a poster presentation session for new researchers as well as displays and posters from more established organisations.

More information and a booking form is available from the events page on www. ukeconet.org . If you wish to offer a paper or support for the conference please email info@hallamec.plus.com 3

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014

Making real space for nature: a continuum approach to UK conservation Traditional conservation concerns over wildlife loss, cherished habitats and landscape heritage are holding back more adventurous thinking on rewilding, species reintroductions and landscape-scale natural processes. A bolder vision for the UK countryside, with a range of ambitions for wildlife and landscape conservation could allow nature to flourish to its full potential.

STEVE CARVER My friend Mark Fisher1 enjoys a constructive argument with me, usually over a pie and a pint. After musing on the quality of the beer, our discussions tend to focus on wilderness and the poor state of nature conservation in the UK. Our shared experience of wilder landscapes elsewhere in the world has shown what a mess we're in here.

Initially, having both seen the scope and potential of wilderness and untrammelled nature in the vast open spaces of North America we may have been forgiven for thinking that kind of natural freedom was not possible here on this ‘small and crowded island’. Subsequent explorations of mainland Europe, and the concurrent rise in interest in the wilderness condition there have led us to question this logic.

Other countries, even ones as small as our own, have started to think outside of the box when it comes to species reintroductions, wilderness and natural processes.

The wolf returns In other parts of Europe people co-exist with bear, wolf and lynx. Occasional conflicts inevitably arise, but people are in the main accepting of their presence and have often welcomed these top level predators. Here we seem to struggle with butterflies, boar and beavers. In the case of the wolf, this shy, adaptable and oft-vilified animal has started to recolonise western Europe from strongholds in the east and north, appearing in France and Germany and even in the Netherlands and Denmark.2 The EU requires as part of the Habitats Directive that we consider the feasibility of the reintroduction of native species and, where they do show up under their own accord, that we afford them full protection.3 It is for this reason that both the Netherlands and Denmark have undertaken extensive studies and consultation on wolves and developed their own wolf management plans.4 If it wasn't for the English Channel, perhaps wolves would show up here given time. If they do make an appearance, by whatever means, I can only imagine that they will be treated the same as the illegal immigrants; rounded up, arrested and imprisoned ...or worse.... and all without a fair trial or hearing - just look at the reaction to the five wolves which escaped from Colchester Zoo last year.5 There will be no wolf studies here, 4

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 no consultations, no policy and no action plan, at least not outside of academia for the foreseeable future, or until a pack or two do manage to make it ashore when all hell will break loose. Why can’t we see the bigger picture when it comes to nature in this country?

Wilder ...by design?

The title of this article stems from a conversation with another good friend, Alison Parfitt, who drew my attention to Ian Rotherham’s workshops at Sheffield Hallam University. I offered a contribution to the May 2014 event based on my work with Scottish Natural Heritage in mapping wildness to inform the Scottish Planning Policy (SPP2) and National Planning Framework (NPF3) published on 22 June 2014.6 Here, the work focuses on the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) mapping to identify where landscapes sit within a spatial continuum from least to most wild as measured according to attributes pertaining to remoteness (from settlement and transportation) and naturalness (lack of human infrastructure and unmodified vegetation). Scotland has been largely at the forefront of addressing the points raised by the European Parliament Resolution on Wilderness.7 First, Mark and I were contracted by the Scottish Government to undertake a review of the status and conservation of wild land in Europe as a means of informing further development of policy on Scottish wild land.8 This has in turn been widely cited in developing EU policy documents on wilderness. Second, Scotland has moved beyond its earlier definition of wild land formalised by SNH in 20029, to developing the aforementioned wild land map as a means of identifying exactly which landscapes we are talking about (see Figure 1).10 While the map and the areas identified therein are not statutory designations, they are a statement of Scottish Government policy on wild land character and how plans should "identify and safeguard the character of areas of wild land as identified on the 2014 SNH map of wild land areas." As a landscape description, the Scottish wild land map has little by way of legal purchase but it offers limited protection for wild land character through an obligation to consider this important aspect of the wider landscape in the planning process.11

Mapping the continuum

In preparing my presentation for Wilder By Design I began to reassess the wilderness continuum concept from both a geographical and a policy perspective. Looking at a global scale we see a broad range of landscapes arranged along this continuum of human modification from the highly urbanised to the extreme wild end of the spectrum as represented by landscapes and ecosystems found in the remote and unpopulated regions. In these locations we can still find examples of ‘true’ wilderness, of largely untouched landscapes with intact ecosystems unmodified by human land use.

As we zoom in to smaller and more populated regions of the globe, to Europe and then to the UK for example, we see similar patterns from least wild to most wild repeated, but increasingly constrained and held back at the wilderness end of the spectrum. At the global scale Europe hardly figures at all in the ‘Last of the Wild’ 5

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 Figure 1. Scotland's wild lands (after SNH, 2014)

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 maps drawn by Eric Sanderson and his team at CIESIN12, yet when redrawn for just Europe, it is possible to see the ‘least to most wild’ pattern re-emerge. Such a map has recently been developed for Europe along with a register of all European wilderness areas by a team that includes Mark Fisher and myself working for the EU and European Environment Agency.

The wilderness continuum that underpins this work is perhaps best visualised adapting a diagram from the late Rob Lesslie (see Figure 2).13 This shows how increasing human modification of landscapes and ecosystems results in decreasing naturalness and remoteness with a corresponding reduction in overall wildness.

Using this approach it is possible to not only categorise landscapes into ‘wildness classes’ from urban and intensive use to wild land and wilderness, but it is also possible to define wilderness quality, from ‘not wild’ to low, medium and high quality wilderness, and map this as a spatial index at multiple spatial scales. I have spent the best part of my academic career developing methods to do this in a rigorous manner and using these maps to help inform decisions about wilderness and its protection.14 Figure 2. The Wilderness Continuum concept (after Lesslie, 2013)

Stuck in the middle with you Much of the current thinking and policy in mainstream UK nature conservation circles seems to be stuck somewhere in the middle of the continuum. That ‘somewhere’ never allows us to move beyond active management of semi-natural environments, which in most cases means hands-on management for the benefit of a select few species and habitats that are deemed worthy of our attention. As in common with much of the rest of Europe outside of the wilder landscapes shown in the wildness 6

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ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 maps, many of these habitats are, in fact, the result of many years of traditional land management i.e. agriculture or forestry. Far from being ecologically natural they are cultural landscapes, valued more for their heritage and aesthetics than for nature.15 Indeed, much of the Natura2000 network is focused on protecting the biodiversity associated with human modified landscapes to such an extent that allowing natural processes to determine rates and direction of successional change that moves away from these assemblages is somehow seen as a bad thing to be avoided at all costs. Such changes are deemed to be contrary to maintaining sites in what is euphemistically called Favourable Conservation Status (FCS) or the condition for which they were originally designated.

As a geographer interested in landscape, nature and wildness I find this particularly bizarre since succession and the associated changes in ecosystem complexes is, and ought to be, the default state of natural, self-willed ecosystems. Change happens. Get over it!

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 on neighbouring Southerscales. Scar Close also supports a far greater biomass and a rich and more interesting vertical structure than does Southerscales where vegetation on the pavement is limited to the limestone grykes where it hides away out of reach from sheep and cattle. Where shrubs have managed to grow higher than their protective geology on Southerscales they exhibit a marked browse line and the topiaried forms typical of overgrazed landscapes. What is more is that Scar Close is alive with bird song and insect noise, whereas Southerscales is eerily silent.

I don't know of any comparative faunistic data for the two sites, but anyone who tells me that conservation grazing is essential on Southerscales for anything other than attracting a HLS payment or as a political sop to local farming interests is either naive or somehow being economical with the truth.

Figure 3a Scar Close

A lack of foresight or just a biased view?

Bound by EU dictat and the strictures of the Habitat and Birds Directives, the CAP and other laws governing the environment, our nature agencies and NGOs often don't seem to have the foresight (or maybe it's the will and wherewithal) to think beyond rear-guard actions to preserve the biotic elements of some bygone era that they would like us to believe represent a cherished idyll. When I question such a view I am constantly told by those who should know better that if we don't actively intervene then nature and biodiversity will suffer and that we'll lose valued habitats and species. Valued by whom? And for what? I am sure that in certain specific cases these people are correct. We may lose a particular habitat and with it a particularly interesting plant or butterfly species in a particular location if we allow nature to determine its own destination via natural succession (for example by rewilding), but when those habitats were created by us in the first instance I'm not sure I get the point. This is especially true as regards the time and effort put into conservation projects aimed at protecting locally rare, yet globally common species and habitats, and particularly when they hinge on continued intervention using traditional land management practices that are themselves far from being natural. This is further implicated when the management in question is patently wrong for the intended objective or at best biased to one particular world view.

Two different wilds At Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales National Park there are two almost identical and adjacent limestone pavement areas; both roughly the same size, both at the same elevation and aspect, but one (Southerscales Nature Reserve) is managed by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust by conservation grazing with sheep and cattle under a HLS agreement, ostensibly for the "restoration of grassland for target species", while the other (Scar Close) is ‘managed’ by Natural England using non-intervention and exclusion of grazing by domestic stock.

It doesn't take an expert to see that Scar Close is by far the more biologically diverse site, with around three times as many plant species observed here than 8

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Constrained thinking Whilst this is just one example, I see the process repeated over and over - on moorland, on heaths, in woodland - where local managers address the symptoms of wildlife loss using evidence from yesterday's landscapes as some kind of immutable truth. This is of course, the well-known "shifting base-line syndrome".16 What drives the thinking that a fettered and constrained nature is the best we in the UK can hope to aspire too? Two things actually come to mind. One is a distinctively human pathological socio-cultural need to be in control, as if nature isn't capable of survival without our benevolent guiding hand (i.e. nature gardening17). The other is that of the ‘wilderness deconstructionists’ or ‘green modernism’ wherein wilderness is seen as just another human construct that has no place in the modern world where we can eco-engineer the planet's future without this thing we call wild and self-willed nature. Both conspire to further limit our aspirations towards truly wild nature in the UK to the semi-natural and traditional culture-scapes.18 The fact that many conservation practitioners may be ‘wildernistas’ at heart is cause for some optimism, but I despair on hearing how the wilderness and wildland ethic is perhaps "best applied to other countries" because lazy thinking and a lack of vision says we're too small and too densely populated for it to have any meaning here.

We need to break out of this mould that limits our thinking on nature conservation.

Making space for nature with rewilding-max

The Making Space for Nature report chaired by Sir John Lawton that I parody in the title of this article made encouraging noises towards the notion of rewilding in its call for landscape-scale Ecological Restoration Zones - large areas of the UK which could see the health and connectivity of their ecosystems restored over time.

The reality of the scheme which saw the light of day in the subsequent Natural Environment White Paper saw the ERZs reduced to so called Nature Improvement Areas with a paltry £7.5 million spread between 12 projects which, in the clamour for successful bids, focused on managing existing sites which amounts to the same old same old.

The one bright spot on the list of intended outcomes is improving connectivity between nature sites and developing wildlife corridors. However, with money allocated on a competition basis there is less influence on how this will be coordinated across the landscape. Geographically informed thinking, such as the Scottish mapping of wildness and Forest Habitat Networks, could have better informed the English agencies and NGOs about wildness and opportunities for restoration, species reintroductions and greater connectivity at a true landscape scale or what I've begun to call "re(al) wilding" or rewilding-max.

Rewilding-lite Other forms of rewilding exist for which I've coined the term rewilding-lite. These, it turned out, with one or two notable exceptions also reported in this issue, to be the focus of much of the Wilder By Design event. They always seem to be at pains to point out how giving nature a free hand will destroy the heritage landscapes of which they seem so enamoured; of veteran trees in wood-pasture landscapes, of ancient peat cuttings on sheep-wrecked moors, of coppiced woodlands or 10

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 lowland heath - all of them man-made landscapes. I concede that there is a place for this where rewilding-max is perhaps too much for the socio-cultural-political and economic landscape to bear, but I do see it as somehow missing the point.

There is, of course, the other rewilding that we have seen develop in mainland Europe which seems to value safari style wildlife tourist parks over substance and true ecological vision. Here the emphasis is on identifying the economic opportunities in abandoned farmland that rewilding with large numbers of grazing herbivores could represent by way of replacing traditional farming incomes with Euros from well-off tourists who would (it is assumed) come to gawp at the spectacle and pay to do so. By way of justification, the Vera Hypothesis is often cited alongside the as yet unsubstantiated claim that 50% of Europe's wildlife is dependent on open and semi-open landscapes.19 If true, this figure has only come about because of deforestation and agriculture, rather than any natural potential distribution of flora and fauna.20

Reconnecting ...but with what nature?

The last edition of (ECOS (35(2)) carried several articles on how we reconnect an increasingly technologically-focused population with nature in the run up to the publishing of the "Nature and Well-being Act" Green Paper by the RSPB and Wildlife Trusts.21 Reconnection with nature is a laudable aim, but with what nature?

A nature that is unthreatening and conveniently constrained within the pastoral bliss of a well-ordered countryside where natural capital is regarded as highly as profit? Sounds attractive doesn't it? And just that little bit… er... dull? We need more than this. We need some truly wild places, with truly wild and self-willed nature and, yes, with predators where we can feel a little unsafe and very alive!

No one is suggesting rewilding-max as the answer for all our nature areas, but we do need somewhere where we are not in charge and where nature rules the roost; a representative set of landscape-scale ecosystems that serve as cores within a connected network of rewilding-lite. Going back to the mapping work, this is helpful in informing decisions about protecting the wild that is left, but it also has the potential to tell us where we could best focus our attention for rewilding and connectivity with some truly big scale and top-down thinking.22

The six rules of Re(al)wilding Of course, this is what I really wanted to talk about at Sheffield in particular how to move the rewilding debate forward and overcome the obstacles thrown up by the nature conservation establishment and nature-culture lovers intent on using the England of Gilbert White23 as a reference point. Thus I had really only used the "Scottish-play" as we like to call it as a kind of smoke screen or Trojan horse for what might be considered by some as the more radical views I have described here. To help summarise the thought process, I came up with ‘The six rules of re(al) wilding’ which I repeat here by way of conclusion: Don't confuse biodiversity and culturally mediated landscapes with wildness and naturalness. They are not necessarily the sameFigure 3b Southerscales 11

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thing, even though they are clearly linked. The biodiversity of pre-war Britain was an essentially artificial one which, nostalgia aside, we should consign to the past and move on to what could be.

Natural succession should be the Favourable Conservation Status for rewilding projects. Nature isn't natural when held in stasis by continual human intervention and interference. Only natural processes and associated trophic cascades create natural patterns and distributions of species. We need only give nature the functional space free from human interference to allow it to take care of itself in wilder land and seascapes. The outcomes might not be what we expect, but they will be wild24.

Work towards a continuum of approaches. Recognise that one-size doesn't fit all and there is value in diversity from urban wilds (e.g. RSPB's ‘Build it and they will come’ campaign) and HNV farming and nature gardening through to rewilding-lite (e.g. Making Space for Nature) and ultimately true rewilding with a full range of native species including top carnivores where wilderness is the intended outcome (i.e. rewilding-max). Geography can be used to inform which approach works best where and promote joined up thinking through a spatially coherent approach.

Work towards a continuum of landscapes. We cannot rewild everywhere and everything. We need a continuum and mosaic of land uses and types from urban (places to live and work), through intensive farming (to put food on the table) and traditional farmed landscapes to managed nature reserves (where we can garden and play at nature). But we also need core non-intervention wild(er)ness where we can step back entirely and let nature be natural and self-willed. Geography can be used to inform what fits best where and how they can be spatially connected to create coherent and resilient landscapes.

Think big and think bold. Climate change, population growth, the global financial crisis, poverty, disease, war and famine are all seemingly big and immovable issues, but without wilderness and wildness we are nothing. Nature is a wild animal not a political one, so treat it with respect and give it space to grow.

Heightened sense

James MacKinnon in his book The Once and Future World, talks a lot about landscapes of loss; the wildlife and the wilderness we have lost around the world as a result of human endeavour, growth and progress. In the final part he begins to talk of rewilding and the world as it could be. Concluding in his own epilogue he 12

NEIL BENNETT

Nature can exist and thrive without our constant intervention. Traditional farming and forestry practices only support those species that have adapted to those particular landscapes and conditions, and should not, in these patterns or distributions, be considered a natural or wild biodiversity. Forcing nature to comply within these landscapes (e.g. using conservation grazing to comply with HLS agreements) only keeps wild nature in check. Allow all nature to be self-willed wherever possible.

talks about how the grizzly bear is a grassland species though we normally associate it these days with mountains and forest because that's where it has retreated as the American prairie fell under the plough and hoof. He recalls an experience spookily close to one of my own wherein we have both visited the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park to watch wolves and grizzly bears in their natural habitat. Whereas James was lucky enough to see a bear with its own kill, I saw the bear trying to steal one made by wolves. It was a huge male Griz but he knew he was out-numbered by the twelve strong Druid pack so retreated to the woods on the far side of the valley to look for easier pickings. The next morning I saw him again closer to my vantage point and watched him shadow a herd of bison for an hour or so. Later that day I walked out across the valley towards Amethyst Mountain. Like MacKinnon, I was acutely aware that here I was no longer at the top of the food chain and that that big Griz was here also, somewhere, possibly close. I wasn't afraid exactly, rather in a heightened state of awareness where every little movement, sight, sound, touch, smell was multiplied tenfold, my nerves alive to every bit of nature and every sign of bear, ready with my fight-or-flight reaction. I was hoping to climb the mountain but my flight mode got the better of me and so I retreated to the road to just sit and watch the bison and the pronghorn graze in the afternoon sun.

A year or so later, I was in Glenfeshie in the Cairngorm National Park and was struck by how similar it was to the Lamar Valley, with one crucial exception: here there were no wolves and no bears. And I wasn't afraid, or at least I wasn't in that heightened awareness of my surroundings. I miss that in our country. We've killed and extirpated all our top predators and that to me is a wrong that we need to right. Ours is a landscape of loss. A loss far greater than any pursuance of a rewilding-max policy would entail for the cultural heritage in the target areas. The ecological and ethical arguments outweigh those of the naysayers. Hopefully before I'm pushing up the daisies, top predators will be back in parts of the UK countryside.

In MacKinnon's words: "It isn't fear that drives us to extinguish fearsome beasts, 13

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 but once they are gone, it's fear that keeps us from bringing them back." (p.255) Come on then, hold my hand and we'll walk forward bravely together into the landscapes of tomorrow.

References and notes 1. Mark is a regular contributor to ECOS and a prolific writer on his own blog http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk 2. Deinet S, Ieronymidou C, McRae L, Burfield IJ, Foppen RP, Collen B and Böhm M (2013) Wildlife comeback in Europe: The recovery of selected mammal and bird species. Final report to Rewilding Europe by ZSL, BirdLife International and the European Bird Census Council. London, UK: ZSL. 3. Full text at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31992L0043:EN:HTML 4. http://www.wageningenur.nl/nl/nieuws/Voorstel-voor-een-wolvenplan-voor-Nederland-verschenen.htm (in Dutch) and http://mim.dk/nyheder/2014/apr/miljoeminister-er-klar-med-forvaltningsplan-for-ulve/ (in Danish) 5. Five wolves that escaped captivity from Colchester Zoo in November 2013 were shot dead because authorities deemed them to be a risk to the public. See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englandessex-25091939 6. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Built-Environment/planning/NPF3-SPP-Review 7. http://wilderness-society.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/agenda_for_wilderness_message_from_prague.pdf 8. Fisher, M., Carver, S. Kun, Z., McMorran, R., Arrell, K. and Mitchell, G. (2010). Review of

Status and Conservation of Wild Land in Europe. Project commissioned by the Scottish

Government. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/1051/0109251.pdf 9. SNH Policy Statement Wildness in Scotland's Countryside. Policy Statement No. 02/03 http://www.snh.gov. uk/docs/A150654.pdf 10. http://www.snh.gov.uk/protecting-scotlands-nature/looking-after-landscapes/landscape-policy-andguidance/wild-land/mapping/ 11. This is a point over which I often argue with Mark. He points out the lack of any ecological vision for the Highlands, while I cede the point but point out it's a step in the right direction citing landscape values as a common precursor to wider ecological understanding.

12. Sanderson, E. W., Jaiteh, M., Levy, M. A., Redford, K. H., Wannebo, A. V., & Woolmer, G. (2002). The Human Footprint and the Last of the Wild: The human footprint is a global map of human influence on the land surface, which suggests that human beings are stewards of nature, whether we like it or not.

BioScience, 52(10), 891-904. http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/collection/wildareas-v2 13. http://www.environment.gov.au/node/20118 14. Carver, S., Comber, A., McMorran, R., & Nutter, S. (2012). A GIS model for mapping spatial patterns and distribution of wild land in Scotland. Landscape and Urban Planning, 104(3), 395-409.

15. See Martin Spray's article ‘Green and pleasant heritage’ in last issue of ECOS 35(2), 48-55.

16. Pauly, D. 1995. Anecdotes and the shifting base-line syndrome of fisheries. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10(10):430.

17. Britain is, after all, a nation of gardeners.

18. Martin Spray (2014) Green and pleasant heritage. in ECOS 35(2), 48-55.

19. http://biodiversity.europa.eu/topics/ecosystems-and-habitats/grasslands 20. BOHN, U.; GOLLUB, G. & HETTWER, C. [Bearb.] (2000): Karte der natürlichen Vegetation Europas/Map of the Natural Vegetation of Europe. Münster (Landwirtschaftsverlag).

21. http://www.rspb.org.uk/joinandhelp/campaignwithus/act-for-nature/index.aspx 22. Rewilding Britain is a fledging charity set to take up this challenge.

23. http://naturalhistoryofselborne.com/ 24. Some intervention might, of course, be necessary to guide or determine specific outcomes, and avoid unwanted effects from non-native invasive species for example.

Steve Carver is Director of the Wildland Research Institute (www.wildlandresearch.org) based at the University of Leeds. s.j.carver@leeds.ac.uk

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Upland farming and wilding This article explores the relationship between upland farming in Cumbria and wilding.

It outlines the Cumbrian upland farming system and its value to wilding processes, and explains the importance of farming upland areas in terms of wider agendas. Finally the article outlines a few of the concerns the farming population have in the development of conservation strategies involving wilding.

LOIS MANSFIELD The United Kingdom is almost devoid of true wilderness, much of our High Nature Value landscape is semi–natural, formed by people exploiting the environment, initially at a subsistence level and then a capitalist one over many thousands of years, to produce a cultural palimpsest.1 Core tracts of wild land are found in our uplands (land roughly over 240m asl) due to low input - low output farming systems that have evolved within the constraints of the natural environment.2 These are obvious areas of choice to introduce as Peter Taylor suggests, “the restoration of the natural processes of wild nature”, where habitats are closer to their more wild predecessors of the past and, in some cases, re-introduction of some of our currently extinct large mammals might be considered. 3 It is to these areas that proponents of re-wilding or wilding have turned to experiment in the UK, with projects such as Wild Ennerdale in western Cumbria4, and Alladale in Scotland. 5

The upland farming system – a Cumbrian example Upland farms in Cumbria comprise: the farmyard, inbye, open fell and intake. These operate as a management system to provide farmers with flexibility to overcome the poor physical conditions of the environment. The inbye land is made up of grass meadows and some occasional arable fields to produce forage crops. Changes in farming practice since the 1960s replaced hay with silage, the latter of which has little wildlife value. The second type of land is unenclosed open fell lying above the fell wall.

The land here can be common land6, owned by a single landlord or shared through common rights by the farms which graze livestock upon it, populating an area of land referred to as a heft or heaf. The fell itself is a mosaic of poor agricultural potential, but high conservation value, semi-natural habitats, usually rough grassland, heather moorland and bogs. It is this zone which has suffered most from increased grazing in terms of its wildlife because those managers with grazing rights can graze as many livestock as their common rights allow, which can exceed ecological or even agricultural carrying capacity. The third type of land is intake lying between inbye and open fell, made up of pieces of common or other land which has been enclosed from the open fell. It produces a semi-improved pasture of rush beds and some nutritious grasses.

These land types form three distinctive farm systems within upland agriculture: Upland farms: a mix of all three farmland types. Most farms in the uplands can be classified this way, and run sheep and beef cattle (known as suckler cows).

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ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 Figure 1. Stratification of the Sheep Industry in Britain

A typical Cumbrian upland farm.

Reproduced with permission from Mansfield L (2011) ‘Upland Agriculture & the Environment.’ Badger Press: Bowness

Hill farms: comprising of mainly open fell, none or only one field of inbye and some semi-improved intake, thus constraining operations to sheep enterprises only.

Dairy farms: confined to upland margins (200 to 300m asl), where precipitation encourages high grass yields, but the environment is mild enough to allow dairy cows to flourish. These farms contain mainly inbye and intake and may be used for overwintering.

Operating an upland farm system and wilding Historically sheep and cattle were bred to fit in with the local environment; able to survive cold harsh environments, graze on poor quality swards and utilise the subsequent lower nutrition more efficiently. It makes them ideal today for grazing of semi-natural habitats managed for high conservation value and Galloway cattle are used, for example, to graze in Wild Ennerdale. The utilisation of these native breeds is, however, a double edged sword; putting on weight more slowly delaying sale and having a low meat to carcase ratio makes them expensive to produce. Whilst the farmer who manages these stock in Ennerdale can benefit from premium prices, he is the only one within the valley who can do this, because if all his neighbours switched to this system then he would struggle to maintain his profit margins as the local market would become swamped. This is not unusual for many forms of upland farm diversification, where a single valley can only support one farm specialising in a particular way.

Central to hill and upland farm systems is the hefting or heafing of sheep on to unenclosed land. The process ensures that sheep stay on a certain piece of land either owned or managed through bestowed common rights to the farm unit. A fell with common rights may therefore be made up of a number of hefts, which are shared between the farms surrounding the fell base. This is known as intercommoning.

Initially, a shepherd and dogs show sheep the invisible boundary by herding them 16

to the heft. In time the sheep develop an instinct to remain within their virtual geographical boundary, and through contiguous heft pressure, do not wander.

Ewes show their lambs the heft and thus knowledge of heft extent is passed on from one generation of stock to the next. It is therefore important that the farmer maintains within the flock enough sheep to show the new generation the heft boundaries. The corollary is that if we introduced wilding on an intercommon, which makes complete management sense, we would be undermining dozens of farm businesses which would have a larger ripple effect not only for the locality but wider still into the national food supply chain.

National food supply and wilding If we reduce stocking densities or introduce full destocking, and thus the size of the upland flock or herd, there could be implications further across British food supply chains. A clear national example of this is the stratification system. Lowland livestock farms rely on the purchase and sale of upland stock, as well as overwintering revenues to operate their own farms. Hill sheep enterprises are made up of a flock containing a range of ewes of various ages, which act as the breeding stock to help with hefting. Lambs can be brought on to replace ewes that get too old to breed or are sold on for fattening up to lowland farmers. Suckler production follows a similar, if more simplified, system. Sheep and beef enterprises are managed through the planned movement of stock from one type of land to the next, fitting the needs of the two stock round one another depending on time of year, so stratification is crucial to farm operations.

A full or partial collapse in the upland system will affect the lowland one, this has happened before during the agricultural depression on the 1880s and 1890s.7 Lowland farmers responded by diversifying into other agricultural enterprises 17

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given their superior land quality, but this would mean a move away from red meat production. One could argue this is good as we have too much red meat in our diets8, or it could be bad as it reduces our self-sufficiency.

Copious economic analysis suggests that upland farming systems provide only small amounts to the national GVA in comparison to other agricultural sectors. However, the UK is only 60% self-sufficient in food production, an ever downwards trend.9 Whether this is a good or bad thing is open to debate. Defra suggests that “having a greater reliance on other countries and sourcing food from a diverse range of stable countries, in addition to domestically, enhances food security”.10 This argument is underpinned if we consider that the optimum population for the UK based on our domestic food production is 30 million; by 2027, it’s projected to reach 70 million.11 However, we can counter this as prices of imported food are rising affected by poor harvests, more pests and diseases, unfavourable climate change and declines in inset pollinators to name but a few. Rising prices affect the poorest households who spend 15% of their budget on food compared to 7% in the richest9.

Governments have responded to food security and social equity by introducing mechanisms to guarantee farm incomes to encourage production and hill farming has been no exception. It is often used as a reason to stop supporting the industry because guaranteed financial support encourages them to increase the stocking rates; particularly the case until 200012 leading to problems of overgrazing, soil erosion and wildlife loss. Governments react by introducing grants, quotas and changes to the subsidy regime, which distort the economic market. With a farming system geared up to higher stocking densities, the swift reduction of stock numbers has led to undesirable ecological results; problems of selective grazing (leaving the unpalatable low conservation value plants) and rapid bracken encroachment across fells have been reported in Cumbria.13 There have also been undesirable economic issues as heft management has become more complex, costly and time consuming; which might suggest wilding is feasible where hefting systems have started to collapse on certain fells.

Provision of wildlife and wilding Whilst wilder landscapes produce different floral and faunal compositions, it is farming operations in Britain which led to a wide range of habitat types evolving.

Upland farming environments produce a wide diversity of managed habitats. For example, the inbye is renowned for its hay meadows, the intake for a variety wet grasslands, springs and flushes, and the open fell for mosaics of blanket bog, all types of grassland and dwarf shrub heath.14 It is the actual farming systems along with the related subsistence economy over the centuries that have allowed these plagioclimaxes to evolve. Cumbria is no exception, and has the greatest diversity of ecological habitats of any English upland.15 However, whilst appropriate grazing pressure is responsible for the ecological diversity, any change can result in overgrazing or undergrazing, which can reduce wildlife and agricultural value. Consequently, various agri-environment initiatives have been introduced to contain the worst excesses of inappropriate farming 18

The Ecological Landscape of Upland Farms Adapted with permission from Dodds et al. (1996) A Management Guide to Management to Birds on Upland Farmland RSPB, Sandy.

practices, whilst maintaining or even improving wildlife value. The Environmentally Sensitive Areas scheme running from 1986 to 2014, merely achieved the status quo between biodiversity, landscape and heritage, and farming practices.16 This is driven in part by nature conservation policy in Britain focused on the maintenance of cultural landscapes of the last few thousand years and not those of the earlier Atlantic period (9000 to 5000bp) as shown in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan.17 Whilst wildlife provision in the uplands is perhaps at the forefront of conservationists’ minds with regard to wilding, upland farming systems also provide a wider package of services and public goods for society. A recent uplands policy review by Defra stated that “hill farming is common to the successful management of many of these [ecosystem services] and is therefore integral to the future sustainability of the uplands”.18 It went on specifically to identify the need to support and encourage hill farmers to become more efficient and effective in their core agricultural businesses, and second, to promote the substantial benefits that upland farming can bring to the wider community and the natural environment. It did however, acknowledge that the key challenge was to ensure hill farmers are properly rewarded for the public goods they provide. Thus when developing wilding projects we need to consider inadvertent repercussions to the full range of ecosystem services provided by hill farming, not just wildlife change, and to ensure fair recompense for those businesses affected.

The individual farm business and wilding We need to consider the individual farm business if we choose to introduce wilding.

There will be a destabilisation of the internal operation, and the economics of the 19

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 farm business itself well be changed by destocking. Using Wild Ennerdale (WE) as an example, particular issues which were raised initially in 2006 by the farming community included animal welfare and the related distance cattle could travel in a day19, the need to be paid appropriately for public goods provision, access to stock movement tracks and removal of boundary fencing between forest and fell.

Such concerns engendered a view in the farming community of a lack of empathy in relation to heft management.20 This is not an isolated case, and in 2011, the Federation of Cumbrian Commoners (FCC) ran training courses, funded by LEADER RDPE, for conservation professionals to bridge such issues. The aim was to raise awareness of how upland farming systems operated on a practical level, leading to better prescription applications of agri-environment schemes.21 Now in 2014, the Ennerdale farmers are still concerned about the continued breakdown in the hefting system, stock reductions and boundary fence removal between the open fell and the coniferous areas undermining effective farm management.22 As a result whilst single property ownership and the related land’s management provides a more stable back drop for wilding for the Forestry Commission, it impinges on adjacent farm businesses due to the very integrated character of the upland farm system in the rest of the valley.

We could argue that farmers could simply diversify into other activities, and legitimately this has happened on some upland farms. The farmer running the Galloways at Wild Ennerdale is happy with his financial returns of running a very extensive organic system, but accepts that he still relies on subsidy and grant. However farm diversification requires different skills sets and is financially problematic if the business has no capital to draw upon - a legacy of the cost price squeeze over the last 40 years. Much evidence shows that it is harder for upland farmers to diversify than their lowland counterparts23 particularly in similar ways within the same valley. On the other hand, as we have no wild large herbivores (except deer) roaming the countryside, we need able stockmen to manage domesticated stock, and this has happened successfully within various projects, such as the Ouse Washes in East Anglia and in Wild Ennerdale, but it does not need the same level of intervention and thus fewer stockmen.19 Consequently if there is reduction in stock numbers, this needs to be offset with well-planned and supported grants for diversification into other viable activity.

We need to also consider the broader social implications of introducing wilding into currently farmed landscapes, however little or much. On an individual level, studies in the 1980s showed that farmers farm for a variety of reasons. A similar study in 2004 found that instrumental (farming is means of obtaining income and financial security) and intrinsic (farming is valued as an activity in its own right) values were mainly the driving forces behind upland farmers.24 Thus introducing wilding into one intercommoning scenario needs to be handled empathetically.

Many farm families may rely solely on meat production for their livelihood. Losing the hefted land, because of the system’s integrated nature, may drive these farms out of business completely.

More broadly, farmers and their families provide social capital for the wider community.25 Internally, hefting is an excellent example of social capital in upland 20

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 Table 1 Ecosystem Services provided by Upland Farms Ecosystem Service Provisioning Food Fibre Minerals Energy Provision Fresh water Regulating Carbon storage & sequestration Air quality Water quality Flood risk prevention Wildfire risk prevention Cultural Recreation, tourism and education Field sports and game management Landscape aesthetics Cultural heritage Biodiversity Health Benefits Supporting Nutrient cycling Water cycling Soil formation Habitat provision

Role of Farming Continued supply of livestock Sustainable exploitation of quarries and mines Afforestation and woodland maintenance Micro energy generation & turbine location Halt soil erosion and pollution Maintain active mire complexes Halt soil erosion Appropriate grazing regimes Retain vegetation

Maintain access and egress across land Provide appropriate vegetation through sensitive grazing Maintain field structures Continue practice and traditions

Appropriate grazing and general farm management Halt soil erosion Limit pollution of water courses

(Adapted from: Bonn et al., 2009)

farming, whereby those grazing livestock on a common seek to work co-operatively to ensure the fell is not overgrazed or stock drift off heft onto to other people’s land. Farming communities tend to perceive the communications with external stakeholders as limited at best, something levelled at the Wild Ennerdale partnership19 as well as the Lake District National Park in general. This decision making relationship is referred to as tokenism26 and can lead to feelings of disenfranchisement, of being undervalued or even unwanted.27 Wilding projects may therefore gain from engendering better bottom-up collaboration and co-management training, such as that operated by the FCC21, in relieving these tensions before they gain purchase.

Concluding remarks and reflection Whether wilding projects take over some parts of the British uplands is all a matter of priorities. Current government policy supports the continuation of hill farming and we have seen that there are some good reasons for this, beyond the naive view that hill farming is an uneconomic anachronism. Even if you feel that hill farming shouldn’t be subsidised to produce food, perhaps we should be thinking more broadly about the full range of ecosystem services it does produce, of which wild landscapes could be just one aspect. Dominated by plagioclimax communities, the uplands continue to pose complex ecological management issues.

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References 1. Birks HJB, Kaland PE, and Moe D (1988) The Cultural Landscape: Past, Present and Future. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

2. Mansfield L (2011) Upland Agriculture and the Environment. Badger Press, Bowness on Windermere.

3. Taylor P. (2005) Beyond Conservation – a Wildland Strategy. Earthscan, London.

4. Wild Ennerdale. http://www.wildennerdale.co.uk Last accessed 9/10/14 5. Alladale Wilderness Lodge and Reserve http://www.alladale.com/ Last accessed 9/10/14 6. Aitchison J, Crowther K, Ashby M and Redgrave L (2000) The Common Lands of England. A Biological Survey. University of Aberystwyth, Aberystwyth.

7. Perren R (1995) Agriculture in Depression 1870 to 1940. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

8. Food Standards Agency http://www.foodstandardsagency.gov.uk Accessed 6/10/14 9. Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (2010) UK Food Security Assessment Detailed Analysis.

August 2009, Updated January 2010 Available at: http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/food/pdf/food-assess100105.pdf Accessed: 12/06/2010 10. Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (2014) Food statistics pocket book 2013 . http://www. gov.uk Page 156. Accessed 15/9/14 11. Office of National Statistics (2014) Summary results, 2012 –based national population projections.

Dcp171776_334073.pdf www.ons.gov.uk accessed September 2014 12. Winter M, Gaskell P, Gasson R, and Short C (1998) The effects of the 1992 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy on the countryside of Great Britain: final report March 1998 Vol.2. Main findings, Countryside Commission: Cheltenham CCX47(ii) 13. Burton R, Mansfield L, Schwarz G, Brown K, and Convery I (2005) Social Capital in Hill Farming. Report to the International Centre for the Uplands: Hackthorpe, Cumbria.

14. Backshall J, Manley J, and Rebane M (2001) The Upland Management Handbook English Nature: Peterborough.

15. Drewitt AL and Manley V (1997) The vegetation of the mountains and moorlands of England- national assessment of significance. English Nature Research Reports No218: Peterborough.

16. Ecoscope Applied Ecologists, CPM Environmental Planning and Design, and CJC Consulting (2003) Review of Agri-Environment Schemes. Ecoscope Applied Ecologists: Cambridge, and for an uplands analysis see Mansfield, L (2011) Upland Agriculture and the Environment. Badger Press, Bowness on Windermere, chapter 8.

17. Hodder KH, Bullock JM, Buckland PC, and Kirby KJ (2005) Large Herbivores in the Wildwood and Modern Naturalistic Grazing systems. Research report No 648, Natural England: Peterborough.

18. Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (2011) Uplands Policy Review. http://www.gov.uk Accessed September 15 2014.

19. Browning G and Gorst J (2009) Wild Cattle – Wilder Valley. Sharing experiences from introducing extensive cattle grazing to a Lakeland valley. Landscape Archaeology and Ecology Review – Animals, Man and Treescapes September Vol 9: 1 -18 20. Convery I and Dutson T (2008) Rural Communities and Landscape Change: A Case Study of Wild Ennerdale. Journal of rural and Community Development. Vol 3: 104- 117 21. Cumbria Federation of Commoners website http://www.cumbriacommoners.org.uk Accessed 30/10/14.

22. Personal Communication Will Rawling OBE. 6/10/14.

23. Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. 2009. Farm Practices Survey 2009 – Uplands and Other Less Favoured Areas (England). National Statistics, DEFRA: London 24. Burton R, Mansfield L, Schwarz G, Brown K and Convery I (2005) Social Capital in Hill Farming. Report to the International Centre for the Uplands: Hackthorpe, Cumbria – unpublished data.

25. Putnam R (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

26. Arnstein SP (1969) A Ladder of Citizen Participation. American Institute of Planners Vol 35: 216 - 224.

27. Taylor P (2013) ‘The road to Salamanca – Little heart at the 2013 World Wilderness Congress’ ECOS 34(3/4): 21 – 27.

Lois Mansfield is a Principal Lecturer interested in upland agriculture, based at the Lake District campus of the University of Cumbria. lois.mansfield@cumbria.ac.uk

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Cambrian Wildwood – new ventures in a wilder landscape Cambrian Wildwood is an ambitious project to rewild an area in the uplands of Mid Wales. This article reflects on progress to date and the challenges of advocating rewilding in the Welsh context.

SIMON AYRES & SOPHIE WYNNE-JONES Inspiration from the wild Rewilding has gained resonance and public profile in the last few years, offering a promise of ecological and spiritual rejuvenation in a world where we are perhaps more accustomed to tales of loss and decline. This is the context for the small group of us setting up a new venture in mid Wales - Cambrian Wildwood Many people are drawn to the empty spaces of the uplands in Britain to walk, to breathe, and to wonder. As the heartlands of Mid Wales, and our extended backyard so to speak, the Cambrian Mountains have similarly offered us such refuge. But the emptiness found in this terrain, as well as being inspiring, can be disappointing – in the lack of wildlife, trees and diversity of habitat. We know from other countries that it doesn’t have to be like this: there are places in the northern temperate zone where wildlife species similar to those that previously graced our land thrives. And we know what used to be here from historical accounts, such as estate shooting records with descriptions of days out in the Cambrians just 100 years ago where grouse, curlew and plover were shot in the hundreds. So, the founders of Cambrian Wildwood began to imagine a different future for these uplands, where the native forest and wildlife could return.

We are not alone in this dream. Others are taking actions which we hope to follow here in Mid Wales: for example, the work of the National Trust for Scotland at Mar Lodge in the Cairngorms; Trees for Life in the Caledonian pine forest; the Borders Forest Trust with their Carrifran project in the Moffat Hills; and the National Trust at Hafod y Llan in Wales. This inspiration led to the development of a charity, the Wales Wild Land Foundation (Sefydliad Tir Gwyllt Cymru) in 2007, to provide a focus for interest in rewilding in Wales and to respond to opportunities. Today, our main activity is advancing the vision for the Cambrian Wildwood (Coetir Anian) to restore native forest and wildlife to an area of the Cambrian Mountains.

A vision for the wild Big ambitious plans catch your attention, like Trees for Life’s goal to restore over 600 square miles of Caledonian pine forest in the Scottish Highlands. There is an understanding that size matters for some ecological processes, such as the migration of large herbivores and the requisite territories of large predators. It also 23

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adds to a wilderness experience to feel that you can spend days rather than hours walking through an area. On this basis, we could propose a long-term vision for the Cambrian Wildwood of 100 square miles in the northern part of the Cambrians that lies south of the Dyfi River.

This represents only 1.25% of the area of Wales. It might not seem too controversial.

But there are important social and economic distinctions between the Scottish Highlands and upland Wales. In contrast to the large estates in Scotland, where deer and grouse shooting predominate and landlords are often absent, the land in Wales is owned and managed as sheep pasture by farming families who have lived and worked there for generations. Inevitably there are sensitivities around rewilding in Wales.

The journalist George Monbiot’s critique of farming in his 2013 book Feral1, describing the Cambrians as a “sheep-wrecked landscape”, did not build any bridges and demonstrated the strength of opposition when the farming community feels under scrutiny. This has enouraged us to consider our stance carefully in the early stages of Cambrian Wildwood. Most immediately we have re-framed our aspirations as a smaller-scale vision to ensure that prospective partners were more comfortable. Here we have followed the approach of the Borders Forest Trust who presented their Carrifran Wildwood as a 1,500 acre stand-alone project. With a focus on one holding, they were still able to attract support and restore a substantial area of native forest without courting too much controversy, and it hasn’t impacted on their ability to purchase further areas of land or discuss species reintroductions.

Quick wins and early frustrations To begin, we needed to identify a suitable area of land for purchase. The area chosen comprises tributary valleys and surrounding hills between the Dyfi estuary and the Northern end of the Cambrian upland plateau. This is within the Dyfi Biosphere and neighbours two areas of Welsh Government owned woodland: a relatively small ancient woodland site and a very large block of Sitka spruce on the plateau to the north of Pumlumon. Senior personnel from Natural Resources Wales (from the former Forestry Commission strand of the new body), which manages the Welsh Government forestry estate, have expressed support for adding some of this forestry land to the project once it is underway.

A current example of the Cambrian mountains' matrix: upland heath in the foreground, feral horses, an expanse of purple moor grass, and Welsh Government forestry plantation.

Photo: Simon Ayres

where there is existing native woodland nearby to provide seed sources, new areas of woodland can become established by the natural colonisation of trees. Many parts of the area are remote from woodland and here there is a strong case for tree planting. Habitat restoration will also be applied to upland heath on the higher ground where purple moor grass is proliferating at the expense of heather and bilberry. Other projects have demonstrated that replacing sheep with larger grazers such as cattle or horses can gradually change this vegetation into a more diverse heathland community.

Shaping the wild character

When should these large herbivores be introduced? One approach would be to leave a period of time to allow for tree establishment to occur across the site.

Alternatively, herbivores could be introduced straight away given their fundamental role in ecosystem function. Another option would be to fence off areas targeted for planting or natural colonisation. The Knepp Castle estate in Sussex faced similar questions at the start of a 3,000 acre rewilding programme in 2001 and we can learn from their experiences trying out three distinct strategies, although we should be cautious about drawing parallels between sites with quite diverse conditions. There, the cessation of farming activities and the immediate introduction of herbivores produced the most conspicuous results for wildlife.

Our plans upon purchasing the land include a range of actions to establish a wilder ecology and landscape character. While we are keen to help increase the extent of habitats favoured by government targets, our overarching aim is that the land is subject to natural processes rather than being farmed. In the early stages there will be a dynamic between allowing natural processes to dominate and intervening for example through tree planting and introducing large herbivores. For example,

Aside from their impact on habitat, large herbivores are also valued as wildlife in themselves, as intrinsic parts of the ecosystem and visible and active components of the landscape. Consequently, we would include appropriate breeds of cattle and horse; and potentially in the future red deer, moose and European bison, on the rationale of restoring locally extinct native fauna. Species reintroductions

We aim to acquire 3,000 acres in four holdings: one is private forestry; two are upland pasture no longer being farmed; and the other is poor quality upland pasture and currently (late 2014) on the market.

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will be backed by feasibility studies and adherence to best practice guidelines.

Considerations must be made of compatibility with public access and responsibilities towards neighbouring landowners. For example, we will need to decide through dialogue with those neighbours how permeable our boundaries should be.

For smaller mammals, water vole is a good candidate for reintroduction as it is almost absent from the Cambrians even though there is plenty of good habitat and mink, an introduced predator, is rare. Research in Ireland2 and observations in Scotland3 show that the presence of pine marten reduces grey squirrel and allows the recovery of red squirrel, suggesting a programme we could pursue in the Cambrians, with parallel reintroductions of pine marten and red squirrel.

In the longer term, there are many other species that need to be considered: a variety of bird species, wild boar, beaver, wild cat and mountain hare, all of which will have to be assessed carefully. The ‘big three’ predators – lynx, wolf and bear – are beyond the scope of the project, though we have an interest in the public debate around their reintroduction.

Despite the reframing of our plans to focus on a smaller defined area, we still need to take account of the wider land-use context. In Wales, farmland accounts for 76% of the land area, woodland 13%, and urban development 10%.4 Farming therefore provides the context in which a rewilding project will sit, and developing a relationship with the farming community, at least at a local level, may be necessary.

If we want to encourage an acceptance and understanding between farming and rewilding, we need to address two questions. What concerns do farmers have about rewilding? And what opportunities could rewilding offer for farmers?

What concerns do farmers have about rewilding?

Farming culture likes to see land being productive. Even afforestation after the Second World War was considered a waste of good land by many in the agriculture sector at the time. Land ‘abandonment’ goes against centuries of hard work to create productive farmland. Peter Taylor5 has linked this to a Protestant work ethic that prevents farmers from accepting a wilder, or in their terms untidy, landscape.

In Welsh, culture, or ‘diwylliant’, is everything that wilderness is not. Wilderness , or ‘diffeithwch’, is something to be tamed. So the very aesthetic of a rewilding project is counter to that dominant narrative.

Economically, there has been a drive away from woodland and mixed farming towards monoculture. In this context, woodland and trees have not been valued as they are no good for grazing and they harbour creatures such as foxes and badgers which are generally unwelcome on farms. So farmers on holdings neighbouring a rewilding project may be concerned about increased “vermin” intruding onto their farm and conversely if their livestock crosses the fence they may get lost.

Farm unions have also expressed concerns that rewilding would necessitate the removal of farmers from the land, referring to historic forced evictions in other parts of the world.6 26

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The real world context

What opportunities could rewilding offer farmers?

The reality is quite the opposite, as rewilding supporters are keen to emphasise the potential benefits to local economies. For example, Cambrian Wildwood aims to create opportunities for diversifying and strengthening income streams in the local economy which could help farm families stay on the land running viable businesses. There are important economic and social considerations at play, not least the cultural dimensions including the Welsh language which are centred on farming communities.

Some commentators argue that wildlife in Britain is best protected by continued farming. Indeed the major nature conservation bodies in UK seem to be tied into this paradigm. However, the well documented decline of nature over the last 70 years is connected to modern farming and forestry methods.7 In the wake of the publication of the State of Nature Report and Feral, the Farmers’ Union of Wales commissioned a report on the importance of sheep farming for wildlife.8 The report concludes that traditional farming has produced wildlife benefits through the centuries, but modern farming is responsible for the loss of wildife.

However, farmland can deliver other ecosystem services apart from food, and it is important that society addresses the obstacles to achieving these. Though rewilding represents a change it doesn’t have to be seen as a threat. This would imply that farmers are incapable of adapting to new circumstances, which is evidently not the 27

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case. In recent years, some farms have embraced new technologies and economic opportunities such as renewable energy generation and timber production. And over the last few decades, farming has changed dramatically. Farmers are adaptable and have embraced developments as readily as the rest of society.

Economically, upland farming is dependent on government subsidies to be viable.9 Whilst the farming industry has been successful in securing a favourable settlement in the current Common Agricultural Policy reforms, this cannot be relied on forever. Some farmers have realised this and explored alternatives whilst retaining subsidy support. Some of these are using ‘rewilding’ as part of this mix, though not always expressly. Knepp Castle in Sussex is an example where a deliberate and planned rewilding project is taking place to create a business “where natural processes predominate and long term financial stability is achieved outside of a conventional agricultural framework”.10 Other examples are more by default, including farms in the Black Mountains of South Wales where the only activity is to cut the bracken once a year to fulfil the subsidy conditions. There are also two examples in the Cambrian Wildwood area – one is grazed by feral horses; and another is ungrazed, with impressive tree regeneration.

Farmers are increasingly rationalising their farmland, often by planting the least productive or least accessible land with new woodland, making use of government grants. The increased woodland adds to the amount of habitat and creates wildlife corridors, showing the potential for integrating farming and wildlife. In the longer term, farming activity may need to concentrate on the more productive lower ground, releasing hill land which may not be generating an income. Rewilding projects could offer market opportunities for land.

Potential new livelihoods A rewilding project could create local business opportunities by attracting visitors to the area. Data from around the UK11 suggest that earnings and employment per hectare are greater for wildlife areas than for farmland. Cambrian Wildwood intends to contribute to the local economy through our activities in the project area, for example: providing a scenic landscape rich in wildlife; creating and maintaining access trails; and hosting educational and cultural events. Enterprises that will be enabled through our project could include: accommodation and catering for visitors; servicing mountain biking and horse riding activities; wildlife tours; providing educational and cultural services; and partners hosting events in the project area.

Near and far-term challenges When engaging with farmers and other land managers, if we want to avert opposition, it could be more productive to refer to specifics in a range of land management options rather than talking in a generalised way about ‘rewilding’.

We should also note the significance of the wildwood and wild animals in British culture, as it is preserved in Wales. The stories of the Mabinogion show a relish of danger and an admiration of wild animals such as the boar, eagle, wolf and bear.

Many people in Wales feel deeply connected to this narrative.

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Remnant wildwood in Mid Wales.

Photo: Simon Ayres

Our focus for the short term is on raising money to buy land. During this process it is important to communicate that the project intends to benefit all of society. Our initial activity on the land will have few implications for neighbouring properties.

But we will need to provide a convincing case for our longer term plans, based on sound research.

For more details see the Cambrian Wildwood website at www.cambrianwildwood.org or Coetir Anian at www.coetiranian.org.

References 1. Monbiot G (2013). Feral - Searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding. Allen Lane.

2. Sheehy E and Lawton C (2014). Population crash in an invasive species following the recovery of a native predator: the case of the American grey squirrel and the European pine marten in Ireland. Biodiversity and Conservation 23: 753-774.

3. Bavin D (2014). 9. Vincents Wildlife Trust.

4. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Wales.

5. Taylor P (2005). Beyond Conservation. Routledge.

6. Alston B (2013). FUW points towards importance of upland grazing. Farmers Guardian, 3 June 2013: www.farmersguardian.com/home/livestock/fuw-points-towards-importance-of-upland-grazing/56013.article.

7. Burns F, Eaton MA, Gregory RD, et al. (2013). State of Nature Report. The State of Nature partnership.

8. Joyce IM (2013). Role of Grazing Animals and Agriculture in the Cambrian Mountains. Farmers’ Union of Wales.

9. Farm Business Survey: www.aber.ac.uk/en/ibers/science-into-practice/fbs/fbs-database/stats/.

10. www.knepp.co.uk (Wildland Project) 11. Taylor P (2007). Wildland Benefits: www.wildland-network.org/meetings/knepp/wildland_benefit.pdf

Simon Ayres is an environmental consultant and Chair of Wales Wild Land Foundation. simonfhayres@gmail.com Sophie Wynne-Jones is Lecturer at the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University and Trustee of Wales Wild Land Foundation. sxw@aber.ac.uk

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Rewilding in Britain Lessons of the past 15 years The profile of rewilding is rising and the old and struggling order of conservation naturally seeks to incorporate its methods. Here, I draw attention to a disturbing tendency of wilful blindness toward the community-base and cooperative endeavours of the British rewilding movement and argue for a more socially responsible approach to the intractable problems of securing large-scale reserves dominated by ecological processes.

PETER TAYLOR Despite widespread public concern for wildlife, in these times of economic austerity the political and economic future for conservation looks bleak. Wildlife surveys report continued serious declines.1 Yet, there appears a glimmer of hope with rewilding. In the UK, there is a growing movement with a body of experience that involves community and cooperation at local levels stretching back more than 20 years. As other players now enter the field and try to incorporate a new paradigm, it is important that the central message and transformational nature of these initiatives is not ignored in the development of more idealised, essentially top-down and possibly unrealisable schemes.

My premise is that in Britain we have levels of ‘rewilding’ experience that are challenging to an old paradigm of conservation. This wilder experience of the natural world is developing at grass-roots level as an emergent community of practise involving both professionals and the broader public. The achievements of this movement are tangible and well publicised, in particular by BANC. There is, however, little indication that this shifting consciousness toward a more creative relationship to nature features large in the thinking of new and opportunistic players now exploring rewilding projects.

Rewilding as a social movement Rewilding, as concept, practice and potential social movement, may be capable of transforming our damaged relationship with the natural world in ways that traditional conservation fails to do. Community and personal experience of a transformational nature has no ready index and few champions – yet it is here that society most needs to register a shift in consciousness. I have witnessed such shifts in all of the projects reported in the supporting materials. These were presented at the conference and are available for download at www. banc.org.uk /node/13.

New players

Currently, there is a very professional high-profile campaign by Rewilding Europe where the lead is taken by WWF Netherlands, acting in partnership with ecotourism interests. Rewilding is also attracting academic analysis as a concept to be 30

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 categorised and subjected to theory. This academic interest and the above interests of corporate bodies and associated entrepreneurs, see rewilding through the lens of their own designs, motivations and needs, selecting those aspects upon which to focus and discarding others. For example, in their one-day presentation to the 10th World Wilderness Congress in Salamanca, Rewilding Europe made reference solely to Alladale and completely ignored the breadth of initiatives documented by BANC and the Wildland Network.

It would be a pity if rewilding were to become solely identified in the public mind with such broad scale projects – in particular, where there are serious social and political issues relating to communities affected by such plans. Land abandonment in Europe causes hardship to many remote communities and whilst it offers an opportunity for resurgent wildlife, especially the large mammalian carnivores such as wolf, bear and lynx, it also demands careful consideration of the needs of these communities. A ‘ghost village’ syndrome stalks the wilder regions of Europe, but one that could also offer an opportunity for a more nature-friendly mode of community sustenance. In this respect, the work showcased by BANC is highly relevant.

Below I consider the most important lessons and issues from about a dozen relatively large-scale ‘rewilding’ projects in Scotland, Wales and England. I would argue that at a grass-roots level, most of these projects represent a fundamental shift in conservation values: • Each moves beyond the static concept of protection toward a more creative relation to the processes of nature wherein human agency is minimalised; • Each challenges at different levels the concepts of biodiversity value – such as priority species, or habitat protection, upon which many designated areas have been historically defined and ‘preserved’; • Each involves a variety of actors, some in the state sector, some in the voluntary sector and even some utilities such as water companies, working toward a common ideal – often with active managerial cooperation; • Most have an educational and community component that extends beyond that of traditional conservation volunteers – for example, in the health and education sectors ; • Some involve a more overt spiritual dimension to the project which informs some key objectives that lie beyond those of a traditional conservation-science approach.

I have visited all of the projects outlined in Supplementary Material over the past 20 years and know personally many of the managers involved. In 2005, with the support of a small project grant from BANC, we published Beyond Conservation – the results of surveying projects in Britain to that date, and adding an appraisal of background issues such as agricultural economics, forest policy, and the ‘rewilding’ movement within the broader context of conservation values. I made an effort in that 31

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 book to extend conservation thinking to include physical and mental health issues, as well as the spiritual dimension – arguing that the patriarchal, Judaeo-Christian religious perceptions of Nature, with its elements of dominion, control and above all, the absence of ‘soul’ in anything other than the human, when coupled with an apparently objective scientific paradigm of conservation biology, were limiting the wider appeal of ‘conservation’ – most especially to younger and wilder people.

The Wildland Network Just prior to that publication, a small group of us in BANC set up The Wildland Network with the intention of each project learning from others, and to gain a higher profile among government agencies and within the voluntary sector. The Network ran regional seminars and national conferences, along with site visits and invitations to the leaders of the Dutch ‘flagship’ projects that use feral herbivores.

In the pages of ECOS, we sought authors from all of these projects, as well as wider European schemes – for example, lynx and bear re-introductions. This body of ECOS writing (60 articles by 53 authors) was published as Rewilding (Ethos) in 2011 as a hardback and series of PDF colour downloads available from BANC. Additionally, BANC members were instrumental in setting up the Wildland Research Institute at Leeds University in 2009.

Avoidance of the social issues ‘Wilful blindness’ occurs when individuals and in some cases corporate bodies ignore awkward facts or issues because they do not support their particular agenda.

It seems to be a feature of early 21st century politics, for example, it was identified in the Leveson Inquiry regarding corporate responsibility in the media as well as in the lead-up to the apparently ‘unforeseen’ financial crisis. As a consequence of that crisis, government agencies in the UK are in the middle of a 30% cut-back in key staff. NGOs are also at the effect of this general austerity drive – both in respect of government funds and industrial sponsors, as well as with general membership.

Academia is faced with the same general austerity, but more particularly, by government’s further intention to make research contribute a proven (measurable) ‘impact’ to the general economic good.

This is the overall political and economic environment within which all organisations must now find sustenance. Such financial scarcity may work in either of two directions: lack of resources especially at the grass-roots may foster cooperation; but in the corporatised environmental sector, that same scarcity may work against cooperative ventures and connection to community – with a shift toward capturing private foundation or national heritage lottery monies. This is the trophic environment for several leading wildlife organisations, as well as academia. Authors of popularising books will likely also have an eye to gallery mentalities.

Margaret Hefferman in her book Wilful Blindness draws attention to how executives isolate and insulate themselves from wider social responsibilities, and warns: "To the extent that money is thought about a great deal in any group culture, social connectedness weakens or falls apart".2 I am concerned that such wilful blindness has been such a feature of Rewilding Europe 3; in the media profile that is emerging 32

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 from journalist George Monbiot’s highly successful Feral, following which the author is setting up a small group intent on furthering the ‘rewilding’ of Britain4 ; and in the academic approaches represented at the Sheffield conference (Wilder by Design, Sheffield University, May 2014). As political initiatives, both Feral and Rewilding Europe initially ignored the breadth of British experience, selecting instead projects that support or illustrate their converging approaches, and failing to reference, discuss or debate any other models. Something similar operates within academic contexts – for example, Jamie Lorimer’s sole focus upon the Dutch experience from which theoretical conclusions about rewilding might be drawn and where a broader appraisal might make an appeal to theory less convincing.5 The same limited vision serves conservationists who would defend their traditional objectives by railing against the more extreme projections of rewilding, such as appeals to rewild the British uplands in general. Such wilder visions for the uplands and Rewilding Europe’s large scale plans for abandoned farmland have serious political implications in relation to marginal farming, community life and rural economics. Monbiot argues, for example for the phasing out of ‘perverse farming subsidies’. Such broad statements by players who have no communal responsibility are not representative of the rewilding movement that BANC has documented.

Whilst having the potential to popularise and widen the constituency for rewilding, there is also the potential to alienate key players on the ground, such as farmers, game interests, commercial foresters and even traditional conservationists – a negative potential that all of the grass-roots projects have worked hard to avoid.

These new players could usefully lobby for a new class of subsidy that actually supports wildland objectives such as feral grazing, wood-pasture and natural regeneration on tracts of former agricultural land.

Those rewilding initiatives that take a cooperative approach work within slowmoving generally conservative rural communities; they generally do not define their concept of rewilding or set fixed targets (something funders find hard to appreciate); and they engage in activities that reach beyond the scientific paradigms of ecology and biodiversity. Thus, they do not fit within narrow definitions or traditional academic discourse, nor does their experience on the ground support ideas of large scale political and economic change of the kind that would be required to fulfil the ambitions of a new rewilding agenda.

As this more ambitious agenda moves onto a bigger political stage – with potentially far reaching economic and social implications, it has begun to create organised political opposition. Its narrow focus upon big schemes, however imaginary, is readily taken up by opponents of rewilding – such as the Farmers Union of Wales, and provides an excuse to ignore or side-line the cooperative, long-term, small-scale work with farmers, such as with the National Trust on Snowdon or in Ennerdale in Cumbria. The English National Farmer’s Union has taken a defensive stance over the more extensive rewilding visions of the Lake District, but ignores the cooperative work at Ennerdale, and such polarised attitudes feed back to the local communities, which then act as political pressure against more naturalistic grazing regimes within Ennerdale and against initiatives that would slowly widen the scheme across the Fells.6 33

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This myopic approach would be understandable if the hard work of cooperative endeavour, practical compromise and a willingness to eschew definitions was buried in unpublished managerial practice. This is not the case: the Wildland Network and BANC have worked to make all of this readily accessible. In particular, material has been made available to all of the above popularising initiatives well in advance of their public announcements.

NEIL BENNETT

In this respect, Rewilding Europe, having produced glossy professional brochures and secured substantial lottery funding, as well as a team of chief executives, has acted on feedback and recently embarked upon networking. The more socially aware funders are looking for elements of inclusivity, grass-roots involvement and economic relevance to the rural issues of decline at the margins of agriculture. It is in this latter area, that the British experience is most relevant and where a number of us have been critical of the purist rewilding concepts, safari-land ecotourism and models of ‘nature development’.7

Declaring personal colours My preference is for all endeavours that affect the countryside and wildlife to serve the broader community without prejudice. In that, I am slightly red with an orange tinge - I like to see decision-making that is inclusive and by consensus. If I have any blue, it is that I care for continuity and tradition, but dislike authoritarian regimes where local community decisions can be over-ridden in the ‘national’ interest. I become an ‘activist’ when supposedly national interest usually disguises economic benefits accruing to small elites of business, landed gentry, corporate or financial players. I am a deep green when it comes to living simply, keeping my footprint small and enjoying a wilder lifestyle.

And then there is a colour that would describe a spiritual connection and appreciation of nature but I am not sure what it is – it doesn’t surface, of course, in the political spectrum. In India, it would be black – but, obviously, in Europe black has rather sensitive undertones! In Hindu symbology, black represents both the creative and destructive aspects of the ‘mother’ Universe. Opposite to this is white.

White is beyond the political spectrum, apparently, but I would ascribe it the colour of the scientific and objective mind, the calculator, the econometrician and measurer of all things. White, tinged perhaps with pretentious purple, is also the colour of the priesthood that accompanied all colonial and industrial scale expansion of Europe with it destructive impact on indigenous community and their supporting ecosystems. A white-beard, white-sky worship emerges – patriarchal to its core, where the dark feminine earth and waters are seen purely as natural resource.

And further, by refinement, a business world develops in tandem with a financial system that can claim only 1% of its investments as either ethical or ecologically sustainable. Thus the modern corporate world separates itself not just from the Earth, but in evolving the managerial concept of human resources, separates from humanity itself. This is now the common ‘development’ model offered worldwide to developing countries – one almost impossible for any state to ameliorate without considerable financial penalties.

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I make this spectral digression because whenever more than one conservationist is gathered together in the name of the wild, there will be a spectrum. And we – in whatever role as academics, practitioners, enablers or philosophers of a potentially revolutionary movement, should acknowledge this and strive toward inclusivity.

No room for wild nature?

As an evolving animal, conservation is now well-adapted to the purely rational and ‘scientific’ paradigm of resource management and of ecosystems as a service to the economy. What then is conserved? Not wildlife if current trends continue. Certainly - not the wild. Most nature as defined is now confined to reservations where conservation mentality is a reflection of other mentalities disguised as economic imperative - of roads, ports (both air and sea), railways, housing, population growth, funiculars, golf courses, jet-skis, fisheries, logging, mining, dams, industrial wind turbines, biofuels…. all of these conflicts can be found in Britain. They all still act as a model for global growth.8 In such a world, wildlife conservation is a colluding cousin to devastation of community, cultural degradation and alienation, mass migration to cities and the growth of wage-slave labour in a globalised economy. All of which Britain pioneered as a package that is now sold world-wide. The ways-and-means for exploitation of natural resources gets covered under the rubric of biodiversity offsets and natural asset banking (note the recent appointment of Professor David Hill as deputy Chair of Natural England).9

A transformative future?

We have heard talk of ‘The End of Nature’ and of the reality of a modern ‘Anthropocene’ where nothing on the planet remains untouched by the hand35

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 of-man. Some of the more recent advocates of rewilding do seem to believe that a Pleistocene Park could re-create former realities, but again wilfully ignore the practicalities of re-creating short-tusked elephants and their sabre-toothed predators.10 Much of this co-opting of the concepts and language of rewilding has its roots in American eco-philosophy and in out-dated conceptions of pristine wilderness (with no indigenous people) and ecosystems in an idyllic balance.

Ecosystems are not stable but constantly changing. And we would have to go back to the last inter-glacial (125,000 years) before we could find an ecosystem unshaped by the hands and mind of Homo sapiens. The late Pleistocene post-glacial pristine wilderness is an enduring myth. Humans had already vastly reshaped the continental fauna and flora of Eurasia and Australasia – less so Africa and the Americas.11 Was such anthropogenic influence natural or un-natural change? The answer depends not on science, but the quasi-religious definition of nature. Science colluded politically by separating the human mind from nature, including its own body - the word itself is derived from Latin sciere - to separate. Had science been true to the communality, it would not have disguised itself in Latin mumbo as some kind of ultimate truth, and called itself what it is, The Practice of Separation. The methodology has obvious benefits, but it’s downside is most clearly observed in modernity’s destructive impact on Nature.

If it is time for an end to the old collusions, rewilding has the potential for a new social movement. There is a danger that conservation - colonised as it is by corporate managers and target mentality, may cast itself as the enemy of rewilding – as opposition to letting nature do its thing in the name of management objectives, priority species, biodiversity action plans, and things that volunteers can safely do – like cutting ‘scrub’ or uprooting ‘aliens’. Some conservation organisations have become the wildlife equivalent of travel agents, theme park and gift-shop merchants, encamping on the doorstep of Nature Reserves, developing footpaths, interpretation boards, space for cars and buses. In many localities, sensitive developments can be valuable additions to wild space, but often they invade that space – and as the corporate mentality creeps into the mission, more remote localities become targets for growth of this portfolio.

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

A balance is therefore required, where land can be purchased, preferably by smaller and more local initiatives. There are dozens of real-world practitioners willing to cooperate and create a mosaic of wildland sanctuaries of natural process alongside the communities of wildlife nature-gardeners and the few more responsible farmers.

It is this vision that we must safeguard as a truly transformative relation for human and animal communities.

11.

Europe by ZSL, BirdLife International and the European Bird Census Council. London, UK: ZSL www. rewildingeurope.com and especially: www.europeanrewildingnetwork.com Monbiot G. (2013) Feral: searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding.

Penguin, London.

Lorimer J & Driessen C. (2014) Wild experiments at the Oostvaardersplassen: rethinking environmentalism in the Anthropocene. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. Citation: 2014 39 169–181 doi: 10.1111/tran.12030 Recent discussions in the project management group, in which the Wildland Research Institute takes part, revolve around the community compromises entailed when sheep numbers are reduced and domestic but hardy breeds of cattle graze the woodland under Higher Levels Schemes of agricultural income support.

The issues surrounding ‘wild’ herbivore reintroductions have been extensively discussed in ECOS by specialists from Natural England, the National Trust and the Forestry Commision: see in particular the contributions of Keith Kirby, Matthew Oates, Neil Harris and debates between Peter Taylor, Mark Fisher and James Fenton in Rewilding: ECOS writing on wildland and conservation values. Ed. Peter Taylor, Ethos (2011).

I discussed this recently following the 10th World Wilderness Congress in Salamanca, The seminal book on rewilding, still available from BANC...

Spain (October, 2013), where delegations of indigenous people made presentations In 67 articles, richly illustrated throughout, the book brings together of their stewardship of ‘natural resources’ a unique body of writing in ECOS by wildland practitioners. and ‘biodiversity’; but were largely ignored Available as 3 downloadable pdf files (with colour photos) when making a plea for changes in ‘western’ at £1.99 each from www.banc.org.uk or as hardback consciousness (see The Road to Salamanca, (with b&w photos) from Amazon at £25.

ECOS 34 (3/4) 2013).

David Hill heads up the Environment Bank and the Environmental Market Exchange. The rest of the Board of Natural England show strong representation of farming interests and involvement in agri-environemnt schemes. http://www.environmentbank.com/environmental-markets-exchange.php The practicalities are discussed in Taylor, Beyond Conservation (2005) Routledge. The work was sponsored

by BANC and deals in particular, with available species for breeding, hardiness, migration and dispersal, contagious diseases, etc.

See Flannery The Future Eaters (2002) and The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples (Grove, 2008).

Peter Taylor directs Ethos. Peter.snowfalcon108@gmail.com

References and notes 1. Burns F., Eaton MA, Gregory RD, et al. (2013) State of Nature Report. The State of Nature partnership.

2. Hefferman, Margaret (2012) Wilful Blindness. Simon & Schuster, New York & London.

3. See: Deinet, S., Ieronymidou, C., McRae, L., Burfield, I.J., Foppen, R.P., Collen, B. and Böhm, M. (2013) Wildlife comeback in Europe: The recovery of selected mammal and bird species. Final report to Rewilding

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Heathland conservation grazing: It’s not all good This article discusses the efficacy of heathland grazing, and questions the cost effectiveness, lack of scientific evidence, and points out the need for a more balanced approach and proper research and monitoring.

JONTY DENTON Is grazing doing more harm than good?

Grazing by domestic livestock is an essential interaction in grasslands, saltmarsh, moorland and on some heaths but little information is available on the nature of the relationship between plant and insect diversity under grazing by large herbivores.

Is heathland grazing essential?

Many, including Plantlife promote grazing of heaths. For some plants heathland grazing can be helpful, but on dry heaths, and small blocks of any kind of heath, I believe grazing, especially in summer, can be highly detrimental for the vast majority of the fauna. This has long been known for our reptiles, and many our rare invertebrates can be adversely affected. After a century without grazing the Thames Basin and Wealden heaths have only lost four native vascular plants (despite being reduced in size by over 60%), the New Forest has lost the same number despite continuous grazing. Thus grazing is not essential for the vast majority of the flora and fauna, which have been maintained by fire, and by human activity, increasingly including direct intervention to clear scrub by conservationists.

This is not an anti-grazing stance just a point of logic regarding the durability of heaths, especially dry heath and extensive mire, which has been inaccessible to livestock anyway.

Why the rush to graze?

The Vera model¹ was published right at the start of the new-grazing revolution and was taken by many as a green light to trust to luck with grazing, believing ‘nature will find a way’. It is a compelling theory, with nature doing the hard work so we don’t have to. It remains a theory and applying it to heathland is especially bogus as this is not a primeval habitat, but an accepted man-made habitat!

Site owners have often been forced into grazing for political reasons, without a thought for cost-effectiveness, and more worrying without having any real goals, except blindly following the condition assessment criteria which is in the words of many NE staff ‘a complete fraud’, a subjective and unscientific baseline for judging the state of our finest habitats. By what comparative, statistically robust measure can we say that a site is in ‘unfavourable, recovering’ condition?

Low density grazing can certainly boost biodiversity, the addition of dung alone can bring in dozens of insects (plus fungi), and blood sucking flies readily descend 38

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 on the grazing animals. On wet and humid heaths the reduction of the over dominance of plants like Molinia is proven, and localised puddling also creates micro-niches especially for Diptera. Livestock can also indirectly help control people (and their dogs) on site, with many visitors reluctant to approach cattle. So what is the problem?

Well, many site managers have come to accept the dogma, and in the absence of proper evidence, grazing schemes have been introduced without even a basic balance sheet of pros and cons. The most controversial aspect of grazing is the claim that it will prevent scrub/woodland regeneration. This is something in black and white on most interpretation boards! Prograzers have changed their tune in response to the recent dissenting voices, but the revisionism is plain, and key players like the A typical grazing interpretation board, MoD haven’t forgotten what was the revisionists clearly don’t read them! promised from grazing, and are Photo: Jonty Denton beginning to see that they may be ‘doubling up’ the expense of site management without really seeing any material gains in terms of reductions in the amount of mechanical and chemical scrub control, despite considerable outlays for stock fencing, and livestock management.

Lack of control through uncooperative stock owners or just plain bad management by graziers, especially in the summer months, results in often very serious reduction in structure, and many flowering plants just don’t get to flower and set seed.

A recent field meeting organised by MoD conservation staff to look at the impacts of grazing, summed up the situation neatly. We took in grazed land on Woolmer Forest SAC in Hampshire where in early September the stock were already (and completely counterproductively) being given supplementary feed (hay), and the enclosure had significant damage to the heather and was otherwise bald and flowerless in marked contrast to the adjacent ungrazed ride with abundant native flowers, from which a brief swish of the net yielded several sub adult Raft Spiders, three other nationally scarce species, and dozens of other local bugs and spiders, without setting foot on the opposite heathy slope which has not been grazed for over a century or burnt since 1976, and is one of the most outstanding hotspots 39

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 in the UK with all the native reptiles, Dartford Warbler etc. etc., managed by ARC with manual tree clearance and open sand creation (for female Sand Lizards for egg laying), both facsimiles for the human exploitation which has been considerably under-estimated by Natural England.

Is my worry about grazing effects on invertebrates unfounded?

Species may have endured cycles of grazing in the past, but we are now in a position of much greater fragmentation, and key features on heaths for many rarities are very vulnerable to grazing. Alder, buckthorn, broom, sallows and aspens can be differentially hammered whilst the target problem species continue to thrive. Does this matter? These host species may still exist on ungrazed peripheral areas, indeed this is always the excuse offered by pro grazers, but for many sites especially small ones, the numbers of examples of extremely restricted species being threatened by new grazing regimes is worryingly high. For many of the smaller sites being grazed there just isn’t space to eliminate the problems affecting the vastly more species-rich fauna that over-grazing can have. If you live on the only stand of alder buckthorn, aspen, or live in the only Sphagnum pool, it is unlikely your ‘grazing tolerance’ will be much help! Outcome: you lose several rare species in the pursuit of attempting to bring back commoner albeit declining plants.

Lawns are not mentioned on any citations of any of the SSSIs on the Thames Basin and Wealden Heaths, but they will be an inevitable consequence of the current grazing policy on these sites. Horse grazing was never historically significant where sheep were important but not even considered today because of dog pressure.

In his seminal book on the New Forest² the late great Colin Tubbs pointed out that the Thames valley/Wealden heaths have very different histories, and made no suggestion that New Forest style management would benefit them. Despite this, the perception amongst many naturalist who have spent many years studying these superb heaths is that their voices and the wealth of data they have assembled are being ignored and New Forest and Dorset management practices are being imported, with scant regard for the obvious historic and faunistic differences.

SSSI condition assessment criteria were largely developed in Dorset, and their inappropriate application to other regions can throw up bizarre inconsistencies such as sites failing to pass the test on botanical grounds, simply because the plants which were selected as key indicators in Dorset studies are just not found in abundance in Surrey!

Rewilding and over grazing in the New Forest Across the New Forest, the well documented decline of the once legendary butterfly fauna and recent alarming declines in flying insect numbers in the wood pasture areas means that the ungrazed enclosures become ever more essential as lifeboats for species vulnerable to over grazing. The numbers of stock turned out on the Forest have increased dramatically since the 1960s. This is a problem that has yet to be resolved, yet the re-wilding advocates still believe that fences should be torn down and grazing allowed. This would be fine if we knew what the best level of grazing was for the most species, but we don’t. Many of these enclosures are 40

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 subject to ‘trespass grazing’ when the occasional couple of ponies find a way in, and this low level nibbling (especially in winter) is sufficient to reduce excessive scrub development.

The holistic re-wilding approach is beguiling, and for key vertebrates such as birds which require large territories, big is beautiful, but comparison of Dorset heathlands showed that somewhat counter-intuitively, heathland fragmentation is actually a positive for many invertebrates.³ The edge effect is clearly essential for many species of aculeate Hymenoptera which forage for food in richer habitats but return to disturbed sandy sites for nesting. In simple terms a sandpit surrounded by miles of heather dominated heath will support fewer species of bees and wasps than one close to a range of flower-rich verges or ruderal habitats. Indeed disturbed heath edge habitats are critically important for many phytophagous invertebrates, which do not occur on mature stands of heather (Calluna).

Obviously when heaths were at their greatest extent rare species dependent on heavy levels of grazing, such as natterjack toads, occurred widely, but could find suitable corners across the once vast heathland landscape. Grazing levels then, as in the New Forest today, varied markedly from place to place, and corners were available for the super specialists (aided then by human activity such as furze cutting, turf stripping, local quarrying etc.). Most heaths have now been reduced well below this critical mass, and the proximity to pine plantations and secondary woodland has changed the game forever.

Is maximising biodiversity a misguided aim?

I was somewhat surprised to have feedback post my BW article4, suggesting that trying to maintain the most heathland associated species was a bad idea, and that the few super specialists or landscape features must take precedence. The draw of purple heather rolling uninterrupted to the horizon is peculiarly addictive in Britain. Perhaps the fear of bandits and highwaymen having somewhere to lurk runs deep, and open means safe. Whatever the reason, it is fair to say that emphasis on maintaining vast open tracts of heather dominated heath remains very strong for many site managers, and mirrors public perceptions of what moorland should be like as well.

In biodiversity terms this is far from optimal as the invertebrate assemblage associated with such areas is limited and resilient. Of the 133 UK BAP species associated with lowland heath, less than 10% are in any way associated with dwarf-shrub, or ericoid heath.5 These are not generalists but mainly edge specialists for which heaths are in part essential. Many species have declined because of the cessation of other large scale activities such as bracken and birch harvesting, turf stripping, and no-one seems to even consider the ending of peat cutting (which created many of our most important water bodies) for which there is considerable well documented evidence.

All these activities create localised effects with clear edges, and it is these edges that so many specialists require, heavy grazing leads to (for want of a better word) blandification. It seems widely accepted in conservation circles that grazing increases 41

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bare ground, but is this really true? Pony grazing in particular encourages a close tight sward and consequently bare ground is reduced. Indeed there is precious little evidence that grazing stock create bare ground unless they are maintained at damagingly high densities. Recent GPS tracking studies in Surrey show that the grazing cattle follow existing open tracks regularly and thus churn up the firm hymenoptera friendly surfaces, replicating a big problem on bridleways, where only a couple of bee species seem to be able to cope with repeated disturbance.

A counter to the positive of the edge effect is that on smaller blocks the remaining open habitats are exposed to a much greater input of unwelcome seed sources, especially pine and birch, but non-native Gultheria is increasing. Heaths can also attract very high density usage by dog walkers, with disastrous impact for ground nesting birds, with other species notably adders often becoming a casualty.

Allowing scattered trees such as oaks to grow on heaths poses few problems for the fauna below, at least outside their shadows. My own recording has shown that the fauna of dead wood on the remaining heaths in Surrey are of at least county significance, something that SSSI designations or many site managers rarely take into consideration.

Human intervention is part of the natural process Heathland is a man-made landscape, and its decline by the abandonment of it as a resource is grossly underemphasised. It is the product of poor soils, hungry (and cold) people and their livestock, and above all fire. The largest remaining blocks in Surrey and Hampshire persisting in the absence of grazing/human exploitation for over a century just happen to occur on the meanest soils and most burn regularly. Using fire as a deliberate management tool has long been out of favour on lowland heaths, but as visitor pressure increases, accidental and pyromaniac fires will become increasingly common, and so most sites will burn within a 10-25 year period. Perhaps the wheel will turn full circle and the resources left untouched for over a century will again become economically useful. Some, maybe all of the problem species such as birch and bracken could be used as a biofuel crop.

Some recommendations for a better future for grazing on heaths

No grazing programme should begin without a baseline survey of the flora and fauna, including the invertebrate interest. If other methods are more cost effective do not graze for grazing’s sake!

Grazing should come after scrub and woodland clearance. Reliance on cattle grazing to control scrub or trees will result in serious loss to ground structure, and associated fauna.

Year round grazing on dry heath, even with moderate stocking densities will reduce structure and produce lawns on existing grassy sub-habitats. Summer grazing is bad news for many phytophagous species whose host plants are prevented from flowering and seeding.

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Feral goat grazing at the Valley of the Rocks, Exmoor, North Devon.

Photo: Ian Rotherham

Key features should just be fenced. The obvious solution is to temporarily exclude grazing stock from vulnerable areas with electric fencing but common laws make this very difficult, which hamstrings site managers.

Lobby to have the ban on tethering removed. Mosaics can be readily created in a few hours using tethered horses or cattle.

References 1. Vera F (2000) Grazing ecology and forest history. Oxford: CABI. 2. Tubbs C (1986) The New Forest. New Naturalist Series, London.

3. Webb NR (1990) Changes on the heathlands of Dorset, England. Between 1978 and 1987. Biological Conservation, 51, 273-286 4. Denton J (2013) Comment: Conservation grazing of heathland- Where is the logic? British W= =+66= vbny5. Webb JR, Drewitt AL and Measures GH (2010) Managing for species: Integrating the needs of England’s priority species into habitat management. No.1. Report. Peterborough, Natural England.

Jonty Denton is a freelance chartered ecological consultant, who has studied the flora and fauna of heathland for over 25 years. JontyDenton@aol.com

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Experiments with the wild at the Oostvaardersplassen This article draws on a discussion of the differences between laboratory and field experiments to examine the practices and politics of rewilding. The analysis focuses on the Oostvaardersplassen, a flagship example that figures centrally in discussions about rewilding in Europe. The article reflects on the wider significance and potential of this wild experiment for conservation practice.

JAMIE LORIMER & CLEMENS DRIESSEN Experiments – real and otherwise Open a dictionary and turn to the entries for ‘experiment’ and you encounter ambiguity. One popular definition describes a scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact. A second common understanding is of a course of action adopted without being sure of the eventual outcome and likely to generate surprising results. What an experiment is clearly varies.

Sociologists of science have tended to associate the first definition with laboratory science. Laboratories enable scientists to domesticate wild nature and create artificial environments. Laboratories establish clear spatial divisions between a controlled environment and worlds they purport to model; theoretically rendering laboratory research inconsequential to the world out there. They also police who can contribute to and contest the production of natural knowledge. But the standardisation of laboratory spaces allows scientists at diverse locations to assume that the conditions ‘here’ are equivalent to those ‘everywhere’, and thus experimental results can be generalised.1 Such experiments are rare in the field, where conservation largely takes place. A different conception of experiments applies here. In contrast to the lab, the field is ‘found’, not ‘made’ and carries with it “an idea of unadulterated reality just now come upon”.2 Controlled manipulations are uncommon and field science involves the careful selection of suitable environments for observation and measurement, remaining open to surprises that might interrupt research expectations in promising ways. Findings are often place-specific. Field sites are more visible and public than laboratories. Gaining authority within them involves negotiating with a wide array of social groups and forms of expertise – like farmers, hunters and citizen scientists.

Finally interventions in the field will have real-world consequences.

Table one summarises the contrasting properties of laboratory and field experiments.

Many forms of applied science ‘shuttle’ between lab and field and gain authority from each.3 Often science is practiced without theory or even testable hypotheses, 44

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 Table 1 Comparative summary of some properties of ideal laboratory and field experiments Laboratory experiments

Field experiments

Made/artificial

Found/natural

Ordered/domesticated

Disordered/wild

Inconsequential

Consequential

Anywhere

Here

Secluded/private

Visible/public

is infused with local values and must wrestle with unpredictable and surprising materials.4 More fundamentally, the ubiquity of modern science – in terms of both the knowledge it has created and the consequences it has unleashed – has erased the boundary between the lab and field. We live in a world characterised by ‘real world experiments’5, in which all of us should be (but are often not) involved in deliberating as to their conduct and consequences.

In this paper we focus on the example of the Oostvaardersplassen (OVP) – a polder in the Netherlands that has become a controversial flagship for the rewilding movement. Drawing on the distinction between types of experiments presented above, we work through the following three points of tension relating to this example: whether the site is understood as found or made, the relative importance attached to order and surprise in its management and the involvement of people and stakeholders in the management decision-making processes. Through an appraisal of what is happening at OVP we examine the potential of such wild experiments for conservation.6

Accidental ecology of the Oostvaardersplassen The OVP is a publicly owned 5500ha polder located just North of Amsterdam. The land was reclaimed from the sea in 1968 and intended for industrial development.

This did not occur and the site was abandoned, resulting in the emergence of a wetland area. This was colonised by greylag geese, whose grazing behavior prevented forest succession and created habitat for a range of rare and migratory bird species. By 1983 the OVP had been designated as a nature reserve. It was first managed by the land reclamation authority, before becoming the responsibility of Staatsbosbeheer (the state forestry agency). The site management team, including the ecologist Frans Vera, introduced herds of horses, cattle and red deer to diversify the ‘naturalistic grazing’ performed by the geese. These animals gradually ‘dedomesticated’, developing behaviours and creating ecologies that are claimed to be analogous with Europe at the end of the Pleistocene.

Inspired by his experiences at OVP and his PhD research, Vera published a book that outlined a new paradigm for European paleoecology and (consequently) nature conservation.7 He challenges the orthodox assumption that the climax equilibrium vegetation for Western Europe at the end of the Pleistocene was the closed-canopy ‘high-forest’ and proposes an alternative, non-linear model of shifting forest-pasture landscapes, kept partially open by the grazing of large herbivores. The accidental 45

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ecology of OVP offered a unique opportunity to ‘experiment with large ungulates living in the wild’8 to test his alternative ecological hypothesis and to demonstrate their implications for wildlife management. The OVP experiment helped drive a paradigm shift in Dutch conservation towards ‘nature development’, engineering ‘new nature’ with large herbivores in a networked ‘ecological main structure’.

The OVP experiment has proved controversial in the Netherlands and across Europe.

Traditional conservationists fear the loss of habitats for rare species, animal welfarists are concerned with the ethics of de-domestication, farmers and other rural citizens are anxious at the demise of cultural landscapes, while scientists contest the veracity of Vera’s paleoecology and its utility as an ecological baseline. The management of the OVP has been subject to two inquiries by international commissions assembled by the Dutch government. Much of this debate centres on the framing of OVP as an experiment and can thus be usefully explored by making reference to the three axes for enquiry that were introduced above.

Found-made Vera and his colleagues present OVP as an ideal laboratory to test a scientific hypothesis. The land was literally made; created from the sea as part of the largest artificial island in the world. Without any cultural history the terrain and hydrology can be sculpted with dikes, pumps and diggers. As the site is fenced and entrenched, flora, fauna and human access can be controlled. However, the scientific legitimacy of OVP as a site to test Vera’s paleoecological hypothesis (and from which to scale up its outcomes) requires that it be accepted as analogous to wild ‘found’ sites (past and present). They have downplayed human intervention, to stress the abandonment of the land, the ‘self-willed’ or ‘spontaneous’ nature of its ecology and its subsequent discovery by conservationists. Histories of the site ascribe great agency to the geese and subsequent herbivores as architects of ecological change.

Critics of the OVP experiment have revealed paradoxes that undermine its found or made status. For example, commentators sympathetic to the farming and hunting lobby dwell on fences and flood control, arguing that the artificiality of OVP undermines its authenticity. In contrast, Dutch and UK ecologists take issue with the presentation of OVP as a lab. They challenge the degree of control that has been exerted and the extent to which its findings can be generalised.9 OVP is presented as a distinct place, not a generic laboratory.

Partly in response to these criticisms advocates have sought to move beyond the lab-field binary. Here they pitch OVP as a model for conservation in the context of novel ecosystems, where found-made distinctions hold less sway. For example, Vera no longer presents his paleoecological baseline as an authentic return to a prehistoric wild nature, but as a dynamic ‘reference’ for future management. Emma Marris heralds the OVP experiment as exemplary for conservation on a ‘ragamuffin earth’.10 For Wild Europe, this necessitates a terminological shift from the ‘unspoiled’ to the ‘untamed’.11 Here the emphasis is on processes, which Rewilding Europe argues serves “to highlight rewilding as a concept that does not aim at the fixed conservation 46

Wild nature in suburbia - The location of the Oostvaardersplassen on a reclaimed polder adjacent to the new town of Lelystad.

of particular species, habitats or a priori lost landscapes, but rather opens for (sic) the continuous and spontaneous creation of habitats and spaces for species”.12 The lab-field and the made-found distinction also came to the fore in a related controversy over the legitimacy of experimenting with cattle and horses at OVP. As the aurochs and tarpan are extinct, Vera selected ‘back-bred’ animals with hardy natures and wild aesthetics as his surrogate bovine and equine grazers. Released from the forms of animal management associated with agriculture they were to dedomesticate themselves, creating the ‘Serengeti behind the dykes’ that advocates imagined.13 However, animal welfare campaigners argued that these herbivores were not ‘found’ in the wild, nor did they arrive of their own accord. They are ‘made’ animals, taken from zoos and confined within the reserve. They should therefore be subject to the animal welfare associated with experiments in artificial spaces like laboratories, farms and abattoirs.

Although they successfully defended their policy in court, charismatic animals dying in the suburbs quickly turned into a public relations disaster for SBB the OVP managers. A compromise was reached whereby a wildlife ranger, armed with a rifle and silencer, patrols the OVP identifying and killing those animals whose bodily condition and behaviour indicate that they would not survive the winter. This has been popularly termed population control with the ‘eye of wolf’. In practice, as so little is known about wild bovine and equine behaviour (let alone their interactions with wolves), the scientific criteria used to assess the condition of individual cattle 47

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and horses are adapted from those used to judge the welfare of farm animals. A novel set of relations have emerged here that combine practices associated with found and made sites.

Order-surprise Some of the most striking differences between rewilding at OVP and the conservation practices prevalent across much of North-West Europe, relate to how site managers deal with surprises. The dominant, equilibrium model of European conservation imagines landscapes tending towards a closed canopy forest that is currently kept in abeyance by agriculture and forestry, low-intensity versions of which generate much of what is valued as biodiversity. This orderly biogeography provides a structure for identifying, monitoring, researching and nurturing various species and habitats.

Here ecologies are linear and can be known and predicted. Hypotheses can be deduced and tested. Surprises are anomalous.

Vera is one of a number of ecologists and conservationists who contest this paradigm.

Vera proposed his alternative ‘theory of the cyclical turnover of vegetations’ with its dynamic ‘ecological reference’ of the forest-pasture landscape.14 This theory could perhaps be used to establish hypotheses for testing in the field experiments at OVP. What is perhaps most surprising and different about OVP is the lack of prediction and management that has taken place. Until recently there have been no targets, no models and no explicit action plan.

Partly this absence is due to a lack of interest in (and thus funding for) ecological science from the government agencies that own and manage the site. More fundamentally, it suggests a very different ethos toward field experiments. This is characterised by a conscious desire to escape some of the ordering practices that frame European conservation. OVP became famous as a source of surprises and those interested in its ecology were keen to nurture and learn from its inadvertent ecological processes. For example, the return of carrion in the form of dead herbivores encouraged a pair of rare white-tailed eagles to nest (formally) below sea level, displaying behaviours unanticipated by ornithologists.

The challenges of such speculative wildlife management are perhaps most clearly displayed in the efforts of conservationists at OVP to comply with the Natura 2000 legislation that governs conservation in Europe. Natura 2000 prescribes a natural order founded on the compositional ideal of a premodern ecology. It identifies a list of rare and threatened species and habitats that should be monitored, modelled and managed. OVP accommodates a host of Natura 2000 target species, especially birds.

It is a Special Protection Area. But conservationists at OVP are exploring nonlinear ecological processes, not just species patterns. This has caused problems. In 1996 the population of rare spoonbills at OVP dropped from 300 breeding pairs to zero, causing concern amongst the external ornithologists who detected it. Accusations were made that the increase in foxes at OVP as a consequence of high-levels of carrion had led to the collapse. There were calls for a change in stocking densities and hydrological regimes. Eventually, the population at OVP bounced back and many of the displaced spoonbills were found to have moved out to colonise the wider landscape.

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Wild herbivores at the Oostvaardersplassen - konik ponies and heck cattle.

Photo by GerardM, Wikpedia Creative Commons

However, this event left SBB exposed. They had not predicted it, were not managing for it and could not offer comprehensive data to account for it. The successive independent commissions on the management of OVP have demanded that more be done to comply with Natura 2000. Calls are made for an improved ‘statement of management objectives’ and a ‘system of environmental monitoring’, including ‘analysis and modelling to identify current processes, predict future trends and to set thresholds to acceptable change’.15 Much of this advice aims to bring OVP in line with prevalent practice. It seeks to circumvent conditions of uncertainty and rationalize the uncertainty that characterizes the current management regime.

Public involvement SBB have been reluctant to engage with interested Dutch stakeholders around the controversies mentioned above. To explore the character of public involvement in this experiment, we will briefly draw on a distinction offered by the sociologist of science Michel Callon and his colleagues between ‘secluded research’ and ‘research in the wild’. Secluded research, they argue, can take place in lab and field and has an important role, but should be linked to its publics through engaging in research in the wild. This involves techniques for ‘dialogic democracy’ that ‘facilitate and organize an intense, open, high-quality public debate’16 where people with 49

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 diverse expertise gather discuss particular events, policies or sites. We can explore this distinction by focusing on controversies over the management of the large herbivores at OVP. The Dutch government responded to the animal management controversy by assembling the expert panel, who were charged with examining the issue and advising the government minister on how it might be improved. They made recommendations in their first report in 2006. The panel was recalled during the harsh winter of 2009 when the controversy flared up once more and the responsible minister was forced to answer questions about OVP in parliament. They published their second report in 2010. In short the panel argued that SBB are not conducting a legitimate (laboratory) scientific experiment.

They first invoke the criteria used to evaluate secluded research, to argue that SBB is failing to comply with the fundamental requirement of future falsification and the full disclosure of data. They suggest that there has not been enough transparency in the data collection and publication to qualify this as a rigorous laboratory experiment.

Turning to the public dimensions of the OVP controversy the ICMO then take SBB to task for not carrying out the ‘stakeholder involvement’ they explicitly advocated in their first report. This is a damning critique. In Callon and colleagues' terms, OVP is neither ‘secluded’ enough to qualify as science nor ‘wild’ enough to be democratic.

Much of the ICMO critique of SBB centres on their perceived failure to control the ways in which the management of OVP has been made public and visible, not with the openness of the management procedures themselves. The focus here has been public education, employing various ‘experts in communications’ to help frame the findings for external audiences. In response to this criticism SBB and other rewilding advocates have gone on the offensive, increasing the visibility of the site through film and photography. Access to the OVP via jeep safaris and bird hides has been promoted, including exclusive bookings for high-end private events. While these images and practices constitute a form of public engagement, they continue to present OVP as a site that is accessed and known by a small cadre of scientists.

While these attempts have gone some way towards persuading the Dutch public of the legitimacy of the experiment, the current approach is redolent of the ‘deficit model’ of public understanding of science that has been heavily criticised in the sociology of science.

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 It is uninhabited and uncultivated, but it is not purified. It is hybrid, in the sense that it is a contrived association of people and wildlife. It serves as the inspiration and catalyst for the proactive ‘development’ of ‘new natures’. Understood this way OVP provides one means of moving beyond the paralysing politics of paradox in which much modern conservation often becomes locked. There is, and never has been a singular Nature to which we can return or against which we can dispute the authenticity of a purported reconstruction. OVP offers an alternative to the stale found-made distinction about which such paradoxes depend. It offers a space for wildness without the daunting geographical purity of wilderness.

The OVP case study aligns best with the second definition of an experiment outlined at the start of the article. Although the contemporary ecology of OVP is presented as a test of Vera’s hypothesis, in practice it is valued for its ability to surprise. Freed from the management prescriptions associated with ensuring convergence towards an equilibrium Nature, OVP generates non-analogue events, behaviours and ecologies.

What is taking place at OVP would therefore seem to have a great deal to offer environmentalism in the Anthropocene. Environments cast off from a fixed Nature and operating in the wild outside of the laboratory (or equivalent computer models) are inherently political. Nonequilibrium ecology offers few universal criteria for identifying failure or for specifying undesirable future scenarios, however self-willed.

Many of the local opponents to what is happening at OVP are defending clearly specified natures, like those associated with animal welfare, the future of rare birds or the demise of the cultural landscapes they inhabit. These are familiar and commendable political projects with hard fought territorial and legislative gains.

There is a real risk that rewilding, with its open-ended ecology of surprises could inadvertently play into the hands of those who would like to see them removed. As such it is vital that we keep sight of a set of wider debates about the future political ecology of Europe that will frame how wilding proceeds.

To use Callon and his colleagues’ terminology, the ICMO is characteristic of a ‘delegative’ model of democracy reliant on the ‘aggregation’ of already existing expertise to answer a pre-existing question. There is little evidence here of their ‘dialogic’ model of research in the wild in which collective decision-making emerges through a deliberative process.

The OVP has become a legitimating exemplar for the ambitious continental rewilding strategy named Rewilding Europe. This demands a paradigm shift in conservation policy (and subsidy) away from the current model of ‘land sharing’ to a more segregated model of ‘land sparing’. This shift would demand the intensification (or continued global outsourcing) of agriculture and the abandonment of the forms of agriculture currently practised elsewhere. The ecological merits of this change are currently subject to much debate. Its possible future geographies and political ecologies will be thrashed out behind closed doors in Brussels in the coming years of Common Agricultural Policy reform. Given the current climate of austerity, rewilding could offer a convenient gloss for cutting expensive subsidies, waiving perceived restrictive conservation legislation and even the accelerated implementation of markets in ecosystem services.

Wild experiments

References and notes

In many ways OVP is an anomaly amongst nature reserves, which are generally conceived as ‘found’ analogies of a prehistorical or premodern past. OVP is presented as a made site for knowing and experimenting with an uncertain future.

1. See for example Gieryn T (2006) City as Truth-Spot: Laboratories and Field-Sites in Urban Studies Social Studies of Science 36 5-38; Kohler R 2002 Landscapes & labscapes: exploring the lab-field border in biology University of Chicago Press Chicago

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ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 2. Gieryn, City as truth spot, page 6 3. Gieryn, (2006) 4. See for example Rheinberger H-J (1997) Toward a history of epistemic things: synthesizing proteins in the test tube Stanford University Press Stanford 5. Krohn W and Weyer J (1994) Society as a laboratory: the social risks of experimental research Science and Public Policy 21 173-183 6. A longer, academic version of this paper has been published elsewhere. See Lorimer, J. and Driessen, C. (2014) Wild experiments at the Oostvaardersplassen: rethinking environmentalism for the Anthropocene.

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 39(2): 169-181.

7. Vera F (2000) Grazing Ecology and Forest History CABI Publishing Wallingford 8. Vera, Grazing ecology, xv 9. Birks H (2005) Mind the gap: How open were European primeval forests? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 20 154-156; Hodder K, Bullock J, Buckland P and Kirby K 2005 Large herbivores in the wildwood and modern naturalistic grazing systems English Nature Research Report No. 648 English Nature, Peterborough 10. Marris E (2011) Rambunctious garden: saving nature in a post-wild world Bloomsbury New York 11. Wild Europe (2010) Wild Europe Field Programme; a Field Programme for creating European Wilderness.

Poster available at www.wildeurope.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13&Itemid=24 [accessed 16th October 2012] 12. Rewilding Europe (2012b) Rewilding as a tool, and the role of science Available at http://rewildingeurope. com/news/articles/rewilding-as-a-tool-and-the-role-of-science/ Accessed 12 October 2012 13. See van den Belt H (2004) Networking nature, or Serengeti behind the dikes History and Technology 20 311-333 14. Vera, Grazing ecology and forest history 15. ICMO 2006 Reconciling Nature and human interests. Report of the International Committee on the Management of large herbivores in the Oostvaardersplassen (ICMO) Wageningen, page 13 16. Callon M, Lascoumes P and Barthe Y (2009) Acting in an uncertain world: an essay on technical democracy MIT Press Cambridge, Mass. Page 178

Jamie Lorimer is Associate Professor at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. Jamie.lorimer@ouce.ox.ac.uk Clemens Driessen is a philosopher and cultural geographer working at Wageningen University. clemens.driessen@wur.nl

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Studying past landscape change to inform future conservation The WrEN project, led by the University of Stirling, Forest Research and Natural England, is taking advantage of the opportunities offered by Britain’s landscapes to study the ecological networks concept. The results will improve our understanding of how different species respond to different characteristics of habitat patches and the wider landscape, and so inform the design of future conservation landscapes.

NICHOLAS MACGRGOR, KEVIN WATTS, KIRSTY PARK, ELISA FUENTS-MONTEMAYOR, SIMON DUFFIELD Designing conservation landscapes, wild or otherwise

Since the publication of Making Space for Nature1 and the various policy documents and conservation initiatives that followed it, the idea of ecological networks – networks of sites that will collectively support resilient populations of species and allow movement across the landscape – has been a prominent theme in English conservation as it is in other countries.2,3,4 As well as giving a very clear message that England’s existing wildlife sites “do not constitute a resilient and coherent network”, the report provided some general principles for thinking about ecological networks, including the often-quoted ‘bigger, better, more, joined’ principles. It also proposed a conceptual outline of the types of areas a typical network could contain, including core areas, corridors, stepping stones, and restoration areas.

This ecological networks concept is very relevant to many of the different strands of (re)wilding thinking; parallels can be drawn with the first two components of the ‘core areas, corridors and carnivores’ school of wilderness conservation from North America.5 While the spatial scales and landscape history and context are very different, the general principle is equally valid here. The remaining semi-natural areas in Britain are highly fragmented, experiencing continued overall declines in wildlife value (despite some notable individual conservation successes)6 and faced with a range of current and potential pressures7,8,9 that are likely to bring further changes to ecosystems and the species they support. Against that backdrop, creating bigger and more coherent conservation areas that enable species movement and other natural processes should probably be seen as an essential basic level of ‘wildness’ that needs to be re-introduced to Britain’s heavily modified and damaged landscapes, even if some level of human management (at least to reverse past damage) may be required in many places.

More broadly, the issue of how best to design conservation landscapes is relevant whether one’s preferred conservation model involves (at one end of the spectrum)

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ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 identifying and acquiring areas of land of a suitable size and scope and leaving nature completely to its own devices, or (at the other end of the spectrum) simply facilitating species dispersal among existing managed protected areas.

Ecological networks in practice

Making Space for Nature has prompted a move away from a view based on individual sites to thinking about networks of sites and the wider landscape around them. But applying these concepts on the ground is not always straightforward.

Thinking about whole landscapes means there is quite a complex range of features and management options at both the site level and the landscape level for a conservation manager to consider. An obvious starting point is to make sure that existing sites are in good condition; that is that they have the appropriate characteristics to actually provide habitat for the species we want to conserve.10 Beyond that, however, there is often a wide range of things that could be done.

Individual sites can be made bigger, or made a more compact shape to reduce ‘edge effects’. At the scale of the wider landscape, gaps between individual sites can be reduced by extending them towards each other or by putting ‘stepping stone’ Fig 1. Some of the many different management options (related to Lawton et al.’s ‘better’, ‘bigger’, ‘more’ and ‘joined’ principles) that a conservation manager is faced with when considering ecological networks. Dark shapes indicate existing vegetation; lighter shapes indicate new planting or management. Actions can be taken at site level (‘better’ and ‘bigger’) and at the level of the surrounding landscape (‘more’ and ‘joined’). The diagram refers specifically to woodland, but a similar set of issues applies to conservation and restoration of all other natural systems.

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 sites between them or by physically linking them; efforts can be made to make the ‘matrix’ of land cover surrounding patches of conservation land easier for species to move across; and new sites can be created to increase the total amount of habitat in the landscape (Fig 1).

Conservation managers usually have a fairly clear idea about how those actions could be implemented – there is now a lot of good experience in restoration ecology to draw on in the UK and elsewhere. Given limited resources, which of the range of different landscape elements/management actions would be most cost-effective for different species in different cases? All of them could be important, but there is still uncertainty and debate about their relative importance.11,12,13 One reason for this complexity and uncertainty is that different species vary in what sort of and how much habitat they require, in their dispersal abilities, and in their ability to cross gaps between habitat patches. There are also differences among species in how they perceive and respond to patches, edges, pathways and barriers in a landscape which may be quite different from human perceptions.14,15,16 Thus, different species do not always respond in the same way to different features at site and landscape level. Another problem is that many studies have looked at only a few species (there are very few multi-taxa studies), have examined only a sub-set of site and landscape variables, and conducted research over small spatial and temporal scales.17 As a result, there is still quite a lot we don’t know when it comes to designing networks in practice. In some cases this is hampering action on the ground. Improving our understanding would enable us to target conservation management in a more cost-effective way.18 Of course, there are a lot of large-scale conservation projects under way.19 Over time, if both funding and detailed ecological monitoring are maintained, they have the potential to give us useful information about the best way to design ecological networks. For example, work by Butterfly Conservation is improving our understanding of how to manage butterfly metapopulations,20 and monitoring at Wicken Fen Vision will produce information about how species colonise new areas.21 But overall it could be many years before broad conclusions can be drawn from many of these projects about the ways that different species respond to different components of landscapes, simply because it often takes a long time for new conservation areas, ecosystems and species populations to develop.

Looking back in time While we are waiting for further data to be collected from Nature Improvement Areas, Living Landscapes, Futurescapes and other large-scale conservation initiatives, existing British landscapes offer a rare opportunity to learn conservation lessons from the effects of past landscape changes. This is particularly the case for woodlands.22 Around the turn of the 20th century, forest cover in England, Scotland and Wales had dropped to around 5%.23 Since then, through extensive creation of new woodland areas, this has risen to around 10-15% (still one of the lowest levels in Europe, but a great improvement).24 From a scientific point of view, this means that from a blank canvas of very low woodland cover, creation of new woodlands over the last 150 years or so has 54

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The WrEN project This is the basis of a major current research initiative called the WrEN (Woodland Creation and Ecological Networks) project. This is a collaborative research project between the University of Stirling, Forest Research and Natural England, working in partnership with Scottish Natural Heritage, the National Forest Company, the Woodland Trust, the University of Derby, and Defra. The aim is to study landscapes created through past woodland creation to evaluate the relative importance of a wide range of site and landscape components of ecological networks for a wide range of woodland species.

Across two study areas – one around Stirling in Scotland, the other around Leicester in England – we have identified a large number of woodland patches of different sizes, ages, levels of isolation and with differing amounts of woodland cover around them.

The focus is on secondary woodlands to try to control for potentially confounding effects of not knowing the age and history of older sites. Sites have been chosen in fairly homogeneous lowland agricultural landscapes to control for other things such as climate, soil and topography. These are also the landscapes in which much of the future landscape-level conservation action might be expected to take place.

Fig 3. The location of WrEN study sites in Scotland and England.

Fig 2. The varied landscapes resulting from woodland creation over the last 150 years provide an excellent opportunity to test the effect on biodiversity of different ecological network components at both the level of individual sites (pale labels) and of wider landscapes (dark labels)

produced, almost inadvertently, varied landscapes of woodland patches – patches of different sizes, with different internal characteristics, with varying levels of total woodland cover around them, of varying distances from other patches, and with different surrounding vegetation (Fig 2).

In addition, because the UK has very good historical land cover maps, recently available in digital format, we can often estimate to within a few decades when a patch of woodland appeared. This enables us to distinguish ‘new’ woodlands from fragments of older forest and, for those new woodlands, study the effects of their age, alongside their shape, size, and surrounding landscape, on the species that are found there.

Together, these woodland areas and maps of their history, provide us with test landscapes that we can use to explore the ecological networks concept over the spatial and temporal scales necessary to obtain meaningful results. Because the focus is on ‘created’ or ‘restored’ landscapes, it is highly relevant to the activities of NIAs and other large-scale conservation initiatives. It also offers a research approach that is complementary to studies overseas that are looking at the effects of fragmentation of old forest or other land cover types.25, 26 In other words, we are studying the effects of putting things back in the landscape (restoration) rather than taking them away (fragmentation).

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At these sites we’re surveying a wide range of species, which have been selected on the basis of trying to pick a range of woodland-dependent taxa that are thought likely to be affected by spatial structure, with different life-histories and behaviours, about which we have sufficient ecological knowledge and that are relatively easy to survey and identify. The project currently includes surveys of trees, vascular plants, lichens, bryophytes, ground invertebrates (especially spiders and beetles), bats, terrestrial small mammals and birds. At the time of writing, more than 100 sites have been surveyed for at least some of these taxonomic groups (Fig 3).

WrEN’s gameplan Surveys of plants will continue in 2015, and research on birds to 2017. There is still much work to do, both to continue field surveys and to bring together and analyse a large amount of data on many different taxonomic 57

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 and functional groups of woodland species and many different sites and landscape variables. It is likely that results for different taxonomic groups will be available at different stages during the project. We aim to share interim findings with conservation practitioners along the way through talks, publications and workshops.

We have also recently extended the approach of the WrEN project to look at grassland sites. Here we don’t have 150 years of grassland regeneration, but we do have 25 years of grassland restoration through agri-environment schemes, and we’re using a similar approach to try to look at the effect of site and landscape variables on invertebrates in these restored sites.

The data collected through this research should give us a much clearer picture of the relative importance of the ‘bigger’, ‘better’, ‘more’ and ‘joined’ principles, and the many individual features of the landscape that influence them, for the presence and abundance of the different species.

With that information we will be in a much better position to develop rules of thumb for conservation managers that want to create more functionally-connected landscapes that will support larger and more resilient species populations. This will be relevant to any conservation initiative that aspires to move beyond traditional site management, whether aiming for a ‘wild’ or ‘managed’ approach or anything in between. The information gathered about designing landscape for wild species can also be combined with new data about wild lands27 and human perceptions of landscape change28 to identify and conserve areas that will provide habitat for both wildlife and people.

More information about the project is available at: http://www.stir.ac.uk/natural-sciences/research/groups/bes/ecologyevolutionandconservation/wren

References 1. Lawton J H, Brotherton P N M, Brown V K, Elphick C, Fitter A H, Forshaw J Haddow R,W, Hilborne S, Leafe R, N, Mace G M, Southgate M P, Sutherland W J, Tew T E, Varley J and Wynne G R (2010) Making Space for Nature: a review of England’s wildlife sites and ecological network. Defra. London 2. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (2011) The Natural Choice: securing the value of nature. The Stationery Office, London 3. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (2011) Biodiversity 2020: a strategy for England’s wildlife and ecosystem services. Defra, London 4. Jongman, R.H.G. and Pungetti, G. (2004). Ecological Networks and Greenways: Concepts, Design, Implementation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

5. Soulé, M. and Noss, R. (1998) Rewilding and biodiversity: complementary goals for continental conservation.

Wild Earth, Fall 1998, pp. 1-11. Available at http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/MES/rewilding.pdf 6. Burns F, Eaton MA, Gregory RD et al. (2013) State of Nature report. The State of Nature partnership 7. Sutherland WJ, Albon SD, Allison H et al (2010) The identification of priority policy options for UK nature conservation. Journal of Applied Ecology 47, 955–965 8. William J. Sutherland WJ, Mark J. Bailey MJ, Bainbridge IP et al. (2008) Future novel threats and opportunities facing UK biodiversity identified by horizon scanning. Journal of Applied Ecology doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2008.01474.x 9. Morecroft M & Speakman L (eds) (2013) Terrestrial biodiversity climate change impacts summary report.

Living With Environmental Change partnership 10. Lindenmayer DB, Hobbs RJ, Montague-Drake R et al. (2008) A checklist for ecological management of

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ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 landscapes for conservation. Ecology Letters 11: 78-91 11. Doerr, V.A.J., Barrett, T. & Doerr, E.D. (2011) Connectivity, dispersal behaviour and conservation under climate change: a response to Hodgson et al. Journal of Applied Ecology, 48, 143–147.

12. Hodgson, J.A., Moilanen, A., Wintle, B.A. & Thomas, C.D. (2011) Habitat area, quality and connectivity: striking the balance for efficient conservation. Journal of Applied Ecology, 48, 148–152.

13. Oliver, T.H., Smithers, R.J., Bailey, S., Walmsley, C.A. and Watts, K. (2012) A decision framework for considering climate change adaptation in biodiversity conservation planning. Journal of Applied Ecology 49 (6), 1247-1255 14. Lindenmayer et al. (2008) as above 15. Skirvin D. et al. (2013) ‘Synthesising Review’ of the use of Environmental Stewardship for restoring, maintaining and enhancing a coherent ecological network in England. Report to Defra (project BD5010) 16. Crooks KR & Sanjayan M (eds) (2006) Connectivity conservation. Cambridge University Press 17. Humphrey JW, Watts K, Fuentes-Montemayor E, Macgregor NA, Peace AJ & Park KJ (in press). What can studies of woodland fragmentation and creation tell us about ecological networks? A literature review and synthesis. Landscape Ecology 18. Quine, C.P. & Watts, K. (2009) Successful de-fragmentation of woodland by planting in an agricultural landscape? An assessment based on landscape indicators. Journal of Environmental Management 90, 251-259 19. Macgregor, N.A., Adams, W.M., Hill, C.T., Eigenbrod, F. and Osborne, P. E. (2012) Large-scale conservation in Great Britain: taking stock. ECOS 33 (3/4): 13-23 20. Ellis S, Bourn NAD & Bulman CR (2010) Landscape-scale conservation for butterflies and moths: lessons from the UK. Butterfly Conservation, Wareham, Dorset 21. Hughes, F. M. R., Stroh PA, Adams WM, Kirby KJ, Mountford JO, Warrington S (2011) Monitoring and evaluating large-scale, ‘open-ended’ habitat creation projects: A journey rather than a destination. Journal for Nature Conservation 19: 245-253 22. Honnay, O., Verheyen, K., Bossuyt, B. and Hermy, M. (Eds.) (2004) Forest biodiversity: lessons from history for conservation. IUFRO Research Series 10. CABI, Oxford.

23. Mason, W.L. (2007) Changes in the management of British forests between 1945 and 2000 and possible future trends. Ibis 149, 41-52 24. Watts, K. (2006) British forest landscapes: the legacy of fragmentation. Quarterly Journal of Forestry 100, 273-279 25. Lindenmayer DB (2009) Large-scale landscape experiments: lessons from Tumut. Cambridge University Press 26. Ewers RM, Didham RK, Fahrig L, Ferraz G, Hector A, Holt RD, Kapos V, Reynolds G, Sinun W, Snaddon JL and Turner EC (2011) A large-scale forest fragmentation experiment: the Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems Project. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 366, 3292–3302 27. Carver S (2014) Making real space for nature: a continuum approach to UK conservation. ECOS 35(3/4) 28. Inwood H, Fleming A, Pungetti G, Makhzoumi J, Jongman R & Selman P (2013) Econets, Landscape & People: Integrating people’s values and cultural ecosystem services into the design of ecological networks and other landscape change proposals. Report to Natural England

Nicholas Macgregor is principal specialist in landscape ecology at Natural England; his work focuses on evidence to inform conservation strategies. nicholas.macgregor@naturalengland.org.uk Kevin Watts is senior landscape ecologist at Forest Research working with a team of ecologists, geneticists and spatial analysts to understand and model the interactions between biodiversity and forested landscapes. Kevin.Watts@forestry.gsi.gov.uk Kirsty Park is a Reader in Conservation Science at the University of Stirling, focusing on anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity and solutions to try and mitigate the negative effects of human activities. k.j.park@stir.ac.uk Elisa Fuentes-Montemayor is a Research Fellow at the University of Stirling studying how human activities impact biological communities and how to optimise conservation actions for biodiversity. elisa.fuentes-montemayor@stir.ac.uk Simon Duffield is an ecologist at Natural England specialising in climate change and in landscape ecology of grasslands and farmland. simon.duffield@naturalengland.org.uk

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Reintroductions in Scotland An update on beaver, boar and lynx This article provides an overview of the policy debates on the potential for returning wild boar, beaver and Eurasian lynx to Scotland. It concludes with a review of an inspiring book showing vivid pictures of the secretive lynx in the Jura mountains from Swiss-based photographer Laurent Geslin.

ALAN WATSON FEATHERSTONE The debate on proposed reintroduction of missing species to the UK is especially evident in Scotland. Here it coincides with both the conclusion of the formal five year trial reintroduction of European beavers (Castor fiber) at Knapdale in Argyll, and the increased political activism and aspirations for greater national empowerment associated with the independence referendum of September 2014. This momentum provides a unique window of opportunity to make progress with reintroductions.

Beaver – scenarios for Scotland By almost all accounts the Knapdale beaver trial has been deemed a success, and in November 2014, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) released a series of reports covering various aspects of the five year programme, including the beavers’ effects on aquatic plants, woodland and public health, as well as the social and economic costs and benefits of the trial itself. From these, and other documents yet to be made available publicly (including one from the Beaver-Salmonid Working Group, which found conflicts between beavers and salmonid fish elsewhere in Europe are rare), a report will be submitted to the Scottish Government in May 2015, outlining three possible scenarios for the future of beavers in Scotland. Those options are: 1. There will be no free-living wild beavers in Scotland, either at Knapdale or in the Tay River catchment (where there are an estimated 150 or more beavers living in an ‘unofficial’ population).

2. One or both of the current populations at Knapdale and in the Tay will be maintained, but there will be no further releases or reintroductions.

3. The current populations at Knapdale and in the Tay will be maintained, and further releases will be carried out, either through a centrally-planned programme, or by inviting interested parties to apply for the necessary licence(s).

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ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 SNH carried out a public consultation about this at a November meeting. It was designed to solicit the opinions of a range of interested parties that will inform the final report that goes to the Scottish Government in 2015. While there was a range of opinions expressed at the meeting, including a predictable one from the representative of the National Farmers Union who stated that they were ‘implacably opposed’ to a beaver reintroduction, the general consensus was that, given the results of the trial and public attitudes to beavers in Scotland (which show that a large majority of people favour their reintroduction), that some version of option three, enabling further releases of beavers to occur, was the preferred outcome.

SNH itself will remain neutral on the issue, leaving it to the relevant government minister to make the decision, but they did reveal that the beaver may soon be declared a European protected species (EPS). This means it will become an offence to ‘capture, kill or injure’ a beaver, except in special circumstances where a licence from SNH would be required, and this should give effective protection to both the existing populations, thereby ensuring their continued existence.

In March 2015 the Scottish Wild Beaver Group is planning a one day Scottish Beaver Conference, focussing on beavers and wetland management. This event is planned to also attract delegates from Wales, where beaver reintroduction is being considered, and England, where wild beavers have become established on the River Otter in Devon, but are threatened with capture by Defra because of concerns they may be carrying a rare parasite. This conference, and the expected decision from the Scottish government on the future of beavers in Scotland, means that 2015 is likely to be a defining year for the presence of this keystone species in the country’s rivers and lochs.

Enter the wild boar…

De facto free-living wild populations of another of Scotland’s missing large mammal species, the wild boar (Sus scrofa), have also become established in recent years.

Sightings of feral boar are regularly reported in various parts of the Highlands. In one area, animals that escaped from a boar farm in Glen Dessary at the western end of Loch Arkaig in Lochaber some years ago have subsequently spread and now range (at least) from Glen Loy near Fort William northwards to Glen Garry and Glenmoriston. Little is known of the actual population size, and the secretive animals are good at avoiding people, being mainly nocturnal. Their rooting behaviour produces very visible results though, with some roadside verges, gardens and even village sports fields having been dug up during the boars’ foraging for roots and grubs.

Although there is no official management policy for feral boar in Scotland, animals that have damaged gardens and other areas have been shot, and a cull of boar is carried out in Glen Garry. The Glen Dessary Estate actively promotes boar hunting ‘in the large forest areas within the Estate’.

There is a clear need for research on the feral boar in the Highlands, to determine their range, population size, rate of spread and effects on other species and land 61

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uses. This lack of study to date stands in marked contrast to the intensive and detailed studies carried out on the beaver populations, both at the official trial site at Knapdale, and on the population in the Tay catchment. However, what the boar do have in common with the beavers, is that, unless there is a radical sea change in both public attitudes and government policy, both species will continue to live in the wild in Scotland.

The trail of the lynx Looking beyond beaver and boar, the missing species that is garnering the most interest for its potential reintroduction to Scotland is the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx).

An online poll carried out by BBC Wildlife magazine in July 2014 found the lynx had the greatest support for reintroduction to the UK amongst the six candidates of beaver, boar, moose, wolf, lynx and bear.

This is perhaps a reflection of the growing recognition that the UK, and Scotland in particular, is lacking apex predators, and that their absence, and the key ecological functions they fulfil, is preventing the recovery of healthy, self-sustaining natural ecosystems. Of the three large predators that are missing from the country (wolf, lynx and bear), the lynx is the most likely one to be given serious consideration for reintroduction in the near future. It lacks the negative public image that the wolf has gained from centuries of prejudice and propaganda directed against it, and it avoids human contact and poses no threat to people. Detailed studies carried out

by Dr. David Hetherington for his PhD showed that the existing habitat in Scotland could support an estimated 450 lynx (400 in the Highlands and up to 50 in the Southern Uplands), with an abundant prey base in the form of the large population of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) that exists in the country.

In May 2013, a new charity, the Lynx UK Trust, gained considerable publicity in the media when it announced it was planning to apply for a licence from SNH that month to reintroduce two breeding pairs of lynx to a site in the Highlands. However, the proposals were seriously questioned by the conservation community in Scotland for their lack of detail and absence of a confirmed reintroduction site. Now, over 18 months later, a licence application has still not been submitted to SNH, and the charity’s website has not been updated for 5 months, so it would appear that the project has been shelved, at least temporarily.

The National Species Reintroduction Forum (NSRF), which is chaired by SNH, heard a presentation about the Lynx UK Trust proposal at its meeting in November 2013, and a subsequent separate presentation about a report on the potential for the restoration of vertebrate species in the Cairngorms National Park also included considerable discussion on the lynx. It is heartening to see that the possibility of lynx reintroduction is now being given serious consideration in official bodies, and this trend is likely to continue. One of the significant steps taken recently by the NSRF has been to formulate a Scottish Code for Conservation Translocations, in order to provide some clear guidance, in line with IUCN recommendations, for best practice with regard to translocations and reintroductions. The lynx has been suggested as a possible species to test the code, on a theoretical basis at least.

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Close up with the ghost cat

The publication of Lynx, Regards Croisés which a high quality photographic book on Eurasian lynx is timely.1 Swiss-based photographer Laurent Geslin spent four years obtaining the remarkable images that comprise the bulk of the book’s 160 pages.

Working closely with scientists from the conservation organisation, KORA, the book begins with documenting the release of several radio-collared lynx in the Jura Mountains in Switzerland. Most of the photographs in the rest of the book show wild uncollared lynx that Laurent tracked over extended periods of time, spending a cumulative total of many months of fruitless waiting before getting a glimpse of these elusive carnivores.

Camera traps set up on known lynx trails produced some of the book’s best images, including one stunning close up photograph of a male drinking from a water pool at the base of a rock. Another set of images shows a litter of lynx kittens in their den. One of the highlights of the project came after four days of waiting in his hide, when Laurent photographed a female and her prey, who was then joined by her three kittens, from a distance of just 50 metres on the edge of a forest.

The book also features photographs of some of the other wildlife encountered in the mountains of Switzerland, such as chamois, wildcat, wild boar and deer, and includes a rare image of a wolf, running in the snow. While the majority of the book consists of photographs, there are three short sections of text (in French) interspersed between the images. These comprise a selection of quotes from various scientists, conservationists and wildlife rangers about the status of the lynx in Europe, its return through reintroduction programmes and their encounters with the animal in the wild. While the French language may limit the book’s information value for English readers, the beautiful photographs nevertheless make it a worthwhile and important publication for anyone interested in Europe’s largest feline.

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References and notes 1. Lynx, Regards Croisés by Laurent Geslin. Published by Editions Slatkine, Geneva, Switzerland, 2014. ISBN 978-2-8321-0599-3 A five minute video on the lengths that Laurent Geslin went to, in order to take the photographs in the book, can be seen at: http://vimeo.com/106376681

Alan Watson Featherstone is the founder and Executive Director of Trees for Life, an awardwinning conservation charity working to restore the Caledonian Forest in the Highlands of Scotland, and which advocates the reintroduction of all the forest’s missing large mammals. alan@treesforlife.org.uk

Book Reviews

The reintroduced lynx in the Harz area of Germany is a strong part of the area's branding to attract visitors.

Photo: Harz National Park

THE SIXTH EXTINCTION An Unnatural History Elizabeth Kolbert Bloomsbury, 2014, 336 pages Hbk £20 (£10 online) ISBN 9781408851210 Amongst reviews of The Sixth Extinction1 Al Gore writes of Elizabeth Kolbert’s “timely, meticulously researched and well-written book,”2 and Robin McKie comments on this “compelling account of human-inspired devastation”.3 What I liked particularly is that complex issues were brought to life through a journey in which Kolbert explores the different aspects of extinction taking place 64

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 across the world – and she introduces the individuals who are charting the phenomenon’s progress and in some cases trying to halt it. She rightly identifies that the Sixth Extinction is practically ubiquitous and highlights how each of us is in part to blame. I did not know, for example that “one third of the CO2 that humans have so far pumped into the air has been absorbed by the oceans,” 4 resulting in increasing acidification, and, the consequent threat to marine life.

But while Kolbert succeeds in explaining the five extinction events of ages past, and perhaps in introducing the concept of the Sixth Extinction to new audiences (an invaluable service if she has achieved this), I sensed that the author was writing as if extinction is news, which, of course, it isn’t.

I always understood that the Sixth Extinction was a phrase coined by Richard Leakey in his book of the same name written with Roger Lewin in 1995;5 Leakey’s work has always been my point of reference. As a young man he witnessed the outcome of the severe droughts of 1960 and 1961 in which thousands of animals died, and he clearly loves the wildlife of Kenya where he was brought up. His first career, however, was as a palaeontologist where he identified the patterns of mass extinctions in fossil records.

This background enabled Leakey to write a powerful narrative in The Sixth Extinction; Biodiversity and its Survival, scaling life’s origins and the impact of ancient peoples, together with an analysis of extinction occurring at the time of his writing with a particular focus on elephants owing to the “gruesome compelling reality that they were hurtling toward extinction.”6 The book has a number of themes, a central one of which is change and in particular 65

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 the pattern of change. Another is that human beings are but one species, and that we must distance ourselves from our own experience – only in this way can we understand the ‘larger reality’ and develop sufficient humility to recognise our powerful impact on the ‘flow of life’.7 As a general observation, not recognising Leakey’s book – which I suspect was novel in bringing evidence together to present a holistic picture for the first time, linking the ‘big five’ with early and contemporary anthropogenic causes of extinction – seems ungenerous. To my mind Kolbert should in part have been updating what Leakey originally recognised, together with bringing her own focus on what she considers to be the key indicators of the contemporary extinction crisis.

Kolbert’s book partly overlaps with Leakey’s. For example, she refers to Alfred Russel Wallace’s change of mind, originally believing that climate change had caused the demise of ‘Pleistocene bestiary,’ but later said “the extinction of so many large Mammalia is actually due to man’s agency,”8 a quote also used by Kolbert.9 Both authors also refer to the work of Thomas Lovejoy, exploring the impact of fragmenting the forest in Brazil, which Kolbert addresses in more detail. I am not sure Kolbert misses anything in the extinction story, but if we want a synthesis of how humans are causing extinction we need to refer to Leakey.

First he says there is direct exploitation, such as hunting. Second, there is the introduction of alien species. Third and worst, the destruction of habitat.10 Leakey provides a very good chapter11 which explains how a combination of hunting and habitat erosion (principally forest destruction) eliminated megafauna over 66

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 the last 12,000 years. Both authors refer to human travel, which Kolbert attributes to a ‘madness gene,’12 though I think Leakey’s representation - referring to ‘invasion’13- is more apt. The Polynesians were amongst the first to create a wave of extinctions,14 though megafauna extirpation in the Americas and Australia also followed human conquest; “Homo sapiens holds claim to a long history as an agent of extinction”.15 Bringing us more up to date Rodolfo Dirzo advises that since 1500 more than 320 land vertebrates have become extinct, and those remaining show a 25 per cent decline in abundance; the situation is the same for invertebrate life. This he dubs as ‘Anthropocene defaunation.’ Large animals, such as elephants, rhinos and carnivores like polar bears are particularly vulnerable.16 The outcome of removing, for example, forest elephants, which have declined by 50 per cent in the last decade alone, is an increase in rodents – giant rats even17 - and a reduction in the distribution of soil fertility.18 Clive Hambler and colleagues have documented extinctions since 1800 (the Great Auk became extinct ca 1812)19 and have pointed out that in the UK we continue to lose one species a fortnight.20 None of these latter researchers, incidentally, are mentioned by Kolbert.

What are the factors behind the Sixth Extinction? Kolbert talks about what has happened and what is happening, but why is extinction being allowed to continue and accelerate? Her explanation includes climate change, ocean acidification, the spread of disease across continents; additional dimensions to the problem less obvious when Leakey wrote his book 20 years ago. Surprisingly Kolbert does not talk about economic drivers, and soy and palm oil production must be two of the

biggest causes of extinction; palm oil plantations across the world now cover an area the size of Brazil. There is also, of course, growing consumer demand from China, leading, inter alia, to elephant poaching, something Leakey hoped was being overcome.21 I would have liked Kolbert to have considered measures of extinction which provide new perspectives. Recently I came across the work of Bernie Krause - the man who reintroduced the xylophone in the 60s and worked with the Byrds! He argues that while a picture may be worth a thousand words a ‘soundscape’ is worth a thousand pictures and soundscapes provide a little-recognised measurement of an ecosystem’s health. He uses the example of Lincoln Meadow in California.

In 1988 he recorded its ‘biophony’ which was replete with the birdsong of numerous species. After selective logging, and having returned 15 times, the difference was shocking and Lincoln Meadows has not recovered since. Local residents were assured that selective logging would not cause any harm, and indeed the woodland looked intact afterwards – but listening told the real story and belied residents’ impressions.22 Listening to biophony, is, according to Krause, “to hear the voice of the divine”.23 Being able to hear and record biophony is a prerequisite to applying this measure of extinction. In the 1960s there were 40 areas in Britain where it was possible to escape man-made noise; now there are just two.24 Kolbert concludes that the ‘rate of change’ is the main problem, as when species cannot adapt ‘many fall out:’ To argue that the current extinction event could be averted if people just cared more… is not wrong, exactly;

still it misses the point. It doesn’t much matter whether people care or don’t care. What matters is that people change the world.25 Compare this to what Leakey opines: The loss of species reduces us in some ineffable way26… I take this responsibility very seriously27 The recognition that we are rooted in life itself and its well-being demands that we respect other species, not trample them in a blind pursuit of our own ends…when we understand this intimate connection… an ethical imperative follows: it is our duty to protect, not harm.28 Kolbert leaves me feeling helpless, detached and not responsible, whereas Leakey makes me want to take responsibility and to do something. I also think Kolbert is wrong. By caring little we are not likely to want to know more; caring a lot leads to empathy and curiosity, and these qualities influence choices – choices which either contribute to or militate against extinction. Some people care, some don’t, and there is a spectrum in between; “the tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way… some scarcely see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself”.29 In short, people who do not recognise nature are more likely to destroy it than those who are moved by nature. And unfortunately the former are more numerous and in their midst some are powerful. Not caring for nature must be a factor behind its diminution whatever Kolbert says.

Kolbert’s Sixth Extinction should galvanise us to live differently, to 67

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 make different choices, but her book – fascinating though it is – leaves me feeling I cannot make a difference.

Leakey, in contrast, radiates love and a palpable sense of moral outrage. The actions of our ancestors have certainly erased ‘endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful’ in the flesh and in our imaginings.30 But love for what remains, and outrage for its plight at the hand of my own kind, means I have not given up quite yet. I remain convinced that ‘it is our duty to protect, not harm.’

It probably comes across that I consider insouciance, a lack of empathy, and thoughtlessness, as much the drivers of the Sixth Extinction as economic forces; after all, if we all thought about how cheap meat was produced, where ivory came from, or whatever it might be, the market for these products and the dire consequences from how they are sourced would not exist or occur. In a much truncated form I have tried to express below what I think is the main driver of extinction – a preoccupation with ourselves, or ‘me’ for short.

Me Long gone, I remember now The Auk and Moa, Steller’s Sea Cow But I forget myself It was never my wont to lament For lives whose end was ever my intent The intimations of my birth Can be found in ancient travel first The Maori’s sacred kiore untied And two thousand island species died Refugees of a woodland race The ubiquitous oil has displaced Those cloned palms would as well be 68

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 of granite For all that now therein inhabits Freighted from southern latitudes A bean; for unconscionable food Crossing Bentham’s insuperable line Upon Amazonia I dine This; everywhere, becomes nowhere left For imagination itself, for rest But I forget myself My mission is almost done All for me, alone, this world is won.

Simon Leadbeater

References 1. Kolbert, Elizabeth, (2014) The Sixth Extinction; An Unnatural History, Bloomsbury 2. Gore, Al, (10/2/14), ‘Without a Trace,’ New York Times Sunday Review 3. McKie, Robin, (16/2/14) ‘The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert – review’ Observer 4. Kolbert Op.cit. p. 123 5. Leakey R and Lewin R (1996) The Sixth Extinction; Biodiversity and its Survival, Weidenfeld and Nicolson 6. Leakey, Op.cit. p.196 7. Leakey, Op.cit. pp.1-8 8. Leakey, Op.cit. pp.172 - 173.

9. Kolbert Op.cit. p. 229 10. Leakey, Op.cit. p.234 11. Leakey, Op.cit. pp.171-194 12. Kolbert, Op.cit. See Chapter XII pp. 236-258.

13. Leakey, Op.cit. p.173 14. Discussed by William Stolzenberg in his book, Rat Island (2011) 15. Leakey Op.cit. p. 194 16. Dirzo R, Young H, Galetti M, Ceballos G, Isaac N, Collen B, (25/7/14) ‘Defaunation in the Anthropocene’ Science: Vol. 345 no. 6195 pp. 401-406.

17. A prospect Kolbert discusses. Kolbert, Op.cit. pp.104-107, 269 18. Doughty C E, Wolf A, Malhi Y, (2013) ‘The legacy of the Pleistocene megafauna extinctions on nutrient availability in Amazonia,’ Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1895

19. Hambler C & Speight M R (June 1996) ‘Extinction Rates in British Nonmarine Invertebrates since 1900,’ Conservation Biology. See also, Hambler, C. et al., (2010) ‘Extinction rates, extinctionprone habitats, and indicator groups in Britain and at larger scales,’ Biological Conservation 20. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ article-1317778/England-losing-25-wildlifespecies-year-Experts-issue-stark-warning.html 21. Leakey, Op.cit. See his comments under the picture by Joyce Poole of a slaughtered elephant.

Page unnumbered.

22. See also: Krause, Bernie (28/7/12), ‘The Sound of a Damaged Habitat,’ New York Times Sunday Review - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/ sunday/listen-to-the-soundscape.html?_r=0 23. BBC Radio 4,’The Listeners,’ Episode 2, Series 2, First broadcast 18 August 2014 - http://www. bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04d4hpt 24. Lean, Geoffrey, (25/4/14), ‘Tune in to some genuinely wild music,’ Daily Telegraph 25. Kolbert Op. cit. p.266 26. Leakey Op.cit. p. 247 27. Leakey Op.cit. p.250 28. Leakey Op.cit. p. 253 29. Blake, William, (23 August, 1799), Letter to the Reverend John Trusler 30. Horatio Morpurgo argues that losing biodiversity is not just about losing species but also ‘habits of the mind.’ Morpurgo, H. (25/7/14) ‘Simplifying the sea - ecocide in the English Channel,’ The Ecologist

NATURE IN TOWNS AND CITIES David Goode Collins, The New Naturalist Library 2014, 418 pages Hbk ISBN 978-0-00-724239-9 £55 Pbk ISBN 978-0-00-724240-5 £35 Kindle version From about £15.00 The wildlife of towns and cities remains an enigma: despite all the evidence to the contrary, the media, the Government and the general public still nurture a belief that wildlife belongs in the countryside, and its urban manifestations are odd, even extraordinary. This excellent book dispels this myth and should be required reading for the doubters. It is the latest in the long series of New Naturalist volumes, and is long overdue. One of the first New Naturalists was London’s

Natural History by Richard Fitter, published in 1945, but this series has not tackled the subject since.

Few people are as qualified as David Goode to write this book. He combines a passion for nature with a sound academic background, a lifetime as a practising ecologist (mainly in London) and an easy and fluent writing style. He was one of a key group of people who understood the importance of nature in the places where people live. They were able to both persuade politicians and others of the need for action to conserve it, and to devise and deliver that action. The book reflects this two pronged approach: Parts One and Two deal with the ecology, habitats and species; the shorter Part Three deals with the urban nature conservation movement, its philosophy, personalities and organisations.

If the doubters mentioned above read no other part of this book they should 69

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 look at Chapter One – ‘Nature in a Small City’. It is a narrative of a walk around Bath, now David’s home, and is a brilliant piece of descriptive and informative writing. It covers the habitats, general and specialised, the vegetation, and the animals, birds and insects. David explains what is where and why it is present there.

Following this are more general accounts of habitats in towns and cities, such as encapsulated countryside, canals, cemeteries and railways, ‘urban commons’ and parks, squares and gardens. The species chapters cover typical urban opportunists, badgers and foxes, and especially birds. I particularly enjoyed the detailed description of plant succession on the disused Feltham Marshalling Yard near to Heathrow Airport.

Nothing is perfect, and I do have a few minor quibbles. For instance the book seems to finish rather abruptly, with no concluding thoughts or reflections. Then there is a hobby-horse of mine: working in towns and cities means inter-acting with people from many backgrounds and many parts of the world. Continually referring to non-native plants as ‘aliens’ does not sit comfortably in these circumstances. Exotic means the same and is much more acceptable. Strangely, introduced birds and animals are rarely described as alien; ecologists just can’t get out of the habit with plants.

Then there is geography: the Black Country is not part of Birmingham. The citizens of Dudley, for example, will not thank David for placing them there, and there are several other examples of the same thing. Birmingham and the Black Country together form the West Midlands Conurbation but they are very different places.

70

ECOS 35(3/4) 2014 levels are low they are consumed by many other native predators. When they are high the otters prosper. During the low cycles crayfish scarcity is exacerbated by a paucity of native fresh water crabs which cope better with this natural phemonena and this results in the otters having to switch to feeding on fish which being clawless they are poorly adapted to do. In addition to this example of unintentional pressure the wider threats to the existence of otters worldwide make depressing reading. As well as pesticide accumulations, prey decline, oil spills, road accidents, hunting for their fur, fisheries conflicts, the pet trade and forest loss throughout their range, the ever increasing drainage of wetlands complicates their future survival.

Finally I think that there is an imbalance in the treatment of some subjects.

For example rivers get only two pages to themselves. Curiously this is in the ‘Meadows, Marshes, Heaths and Hills’ section, not with other wetlands. London’s reservoirs on the other hand merit five pages, and peregrine falcons seven.

Such things do not greatly detract from this first class book. I was lucky to be reading it on a train journey to Glasgow, passing by and through a number of the places mentioned. The book also took me to other places I know, like Camley Street Nature Park and the Jupiter Project in Grangemouth. I also learned that there was once a crane with a wooden leg in London, swifts probably eat a greater variety of species than any other creature, and Fairbairn Ings in West Yorkshire has the highest recorded variety of birds (274) of any inland site in the UK. Peter Shirley

OTTERS OF THE WORLD Paul and Grace Yoxon Whittles Publishing, 2014, 160 pages Pbk £18.99 ISBN 978-184995-129-6 Grace and Paul Yoxon are well established otter experts. As well as creating the Skye Environmental Centre in 1984 and founding the International Otter Survival Fund in 1993, they have undertaken detailed studies of the ecology of common otters (Lutra lutra) in costal habitats and established a wild animal hospital which has rehabilitated many orphaned or injured otters back into the wild. It is therefore unsurprising that their book Otters of the World contains a wealth of information regarding the status of all 13 species of otters worldwide. As well as providing a

simple standard analysis of each species’ range, length, weight, conservation status, diet or hunting technique the text contains an abundance of much more detailed information regarding otter ecology.

The threats to otters are both generally and specifically defined with some interesting case studies of unusual situations. For example in Lake Naivasha in Kenya, Louisiana red swamp crayfish (Procambarus clarkii) were introduced to give the introduced population of large mouth bass (Micropterus salmiodes) something to feed on after they almost completely consumed the native prey base. The crayfish predated the native freshwater crabs causing their numbers to decline but do provide the African clawless otters (Aonyx capensis) which are adapted to eating crustaceans with an additional, abundant food resource. The problem with this is that the abundance or scarcity of crayfish is dictated by the water levels. When the

The book has some excellent photographs of some of the more unusual otter species and contains a range of ‘trivial pursuit’ type facts which are variously enlightening or amusing.

For instance spotted necked otters (Lutra maculicollis) can be caught using an alcholoic mixture made from bananas which makes them drunk and easy to catch while sea otters (Enhydra lutris) conceal their favourite crushing stone for urchins in a specially developed fold in their armpit!

The Yoxon’s and their colleagues from the International Otter Survival Fund are committed to both a better understanding and the long-term conservation of these fascinating creatures. Their passion comes across strongly. While it is clearly a personal work it is I would suggest a real treat.

A gem of a book written with great affection by authors who have a deep understand of their subject.

Derek Gow

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ECOS 35(3/4) 2014

Looking ahead ECOS volume 36 Thanks to all our readers for supporting ECOS through 2014. From the next issue 36 (1) ECOS is moving on-line, and will be published via the BANC website, rather than primarily as a printed journal. This will offer several advantages: it will be on screen in full colour, and readers will be able to comment of the articles through follow up discussions on the website. Readers will also have the opportunity for greater involvement in shaping future content by sharing your thoughts online, on our website or through social media channels. Highlights from talks and discussions at BANC events will also appear through ECOS articles, to keep momentum after these gatherings.

We are excited to be taking ECOS online in 2015. This will offer greater opportunities for dialogue between members and will widen the influence and relevance of the material the journal contains. A printed copy can still be requested, as explained in the covering letter with this issue.

Coming up – enterprise, politics, and the refreshment drive The topics below are a taster of what’s planned for the year. There is still space for your own suggestions…

BACK COPIES OF ECOS The following back copies are available for purchase. Costs range from £8.30 (inc p&p) for issues from the current and previous year’s volume, to £5.30 for older issues.

Up to date prices and order forms for back copies are available at www.banc org.uk.

o 35 (2) Engaging with nature o 35 (1) Flooding and drainage politics o 34(3/4) Biodiversity Offsets, Local

in conservation.

Nature Partnerships

President:

John Bowers

o 34(2)

State of Nature; Rewilding; disease and culling

Vice-Presidents:

Marion Shoard

o 34(1)

Conservation & enterprise, Welsh agency change

Adrian Phillips

Chair:

Gavin Saunders

Secretary:

Alison Parfitt

Treasurer:

Ruth Boogert

o 33 (2)

Defending land-use planning; Development pressures in middle England; Forestry Panel review;

o 33 (1)

Lynx, Badgers, Bees & Beavers; Do we need new groups? o 32 (3/4) The Woodland Edge essays from the wildwood

o 32 (2)

White Paper review, Ecosystem Assessment verdicts, Red Tape rebuff

o 32 (1)

Public Forests Campaign, Big Society, Beavers, Big Birds

Conservation and enterprise – examples and lessons from enterprising ways of pursuing conservation, and building sustainable businesses based on local natural products. The first edition of 2015 will look at latest trends in conservation enterprise, as well as reviewing projects from social enterprises, share schemes and more radical grass roots projects, which demonstrate communal approaches to protecting nature and managing land for conservation.

Political realities for nature - New legislation is being promoted for wildlife and wellbeing – will it happen and what will it achieve? Where will nature conservation feature amongst political priorities after the May election? Why are environmental policies becoming more polarised - a greener agenda is more enthusiastically embraced by some but more fiercely challenged by others who resent what they see as a pushy “green blob”. What is the fallout for nature conservation in this clash of outlooks, and can the conservation sector win back support and resources?

Refreshing Conservation – How can we lift the spirits of a demoralized conservation workforce, and how can we advance nature conservation with more purpose and clarity?

This will be a major thrust of ECOS coverage and BANC debate and events in 2015-16.

helping nature cope

o 28(2) o 28(1) o 27(3/4) o 27(2)

Nature’s Id

72

BANC inspires innovation

o 31 (3/4) Lawton Report, Big Society, Nature

in Austerity

Please feel free to contact us at any time with your feedback and suggestions. If we don’t have your up to date email, please send this to us at enquiries@banc.org.uk Good wishes for 2015. The editorial team, ecos@easynet.co.uk

www.banc.org.uk

o 31 (2)

Strategies for boar, big cats, dog owners, & wild goats

o 31 (1)

Natural aliens; climate resilience; tips for the recession

o 30 (3/4) Ecological skills; Getting started in conservation

o 30 (2) Nature at our service? o 30 (1) 30 years back – and forward o 29 (3/4) New nature – old creatures o 29 (2) Nature’s tonic o 29 (1) Walking the talk in conservation o 28 (3/4) Climate Change adaptation –

Loving Nature?

Accepting the wild?

Shores and seas – the push for protection

ECOS & BANC - keep in touch on the web www.banc.org.uk

Development officer: Emily Adams Other Members of Council: Mathew Frith Mick Green Steve Head Jeremy Owen Lisa Schneidau Peter Taylor

Subscriptions/BANC membership Subscriptions for ECOS are: £25.00 for individuals £80 for corporate/institutional rate £15 for students.

Subscriptions should be sent to: Hallam Environmental Consultants Ltd Venture House, 105 Arundel Street Sheffield, 1 2NT Tel: 0114 272 4227 info@hallamec.plus.com Subscription form available at www.banc.org.uk Subs taken out on or after 1 October remain valid until 31 December in the following year.

Editorial 1. Who’s wild now? Ian Rotherham

Feature Articles 2014 issue 35(3/4) www.banc.org.uk

4. Making real space for nature: a continuum approach to UK conservation. Steve Carver 15. Upland farming and wilding. Lois Mansfield 23. Cambrian wildwood – new ventures in a wilder landscape.

Simon Ayres and Sophie Wynne-Jones 30. Rewilding in Britain – lessons from the past 15 years. Peter Taylor 38. Heathland conservation grazing: It’s not all good. Jonty Denton 44. Experiments with the wild at the Oostvaardersplassen. Jamie Lorimer & Clemens Driessen 53. Studying past landscape change to inform future conservation.

Nicholas Macgregor et al 60. Reintroductions in Scotland – an update on beaver, boar and lynx.

Alan Featherstone Watson

Book Reviews The Sixth Extinction Nature in Towns and Cities Otters of the World

2014 British Association of Nature Conservationists.

ISSN 0143-9073.

Graphic Design and Artwork by Featherstone Design Cheltenham.

Printed by Severnprint Ltd, Gloucester.