<
https://www.positive.news/environment/the-rogue-rewilders-taking-britains-biodiversity-into-their-own-hands/>
"Reintroducing lost species into nature-depleted Britain is ‘not a priority’,
the government said last week. Enter a growing movement of guerrilla rewilders,
who are secretly breeding butterflies, birds and beavers, and illegally
releasing them across the country. Are they halting the tide of extinction, or
doing more harm than good?
It’s mid-summer when I make my way down an overgrown lane towards Derek Gow’s
former farm in the gently rolling hills of the West Country. The drive leads
past freshly cut fields dotted with bales of hay, neatly wrapped in black
plastic.
Gow’s land wouldn’t have looked so different a few years ago, but today it
bears little resemblance to his neighbours’. As we speed off in a
mud-splattered off-roader, he points out ponds dug during the previous winter,
where he plans to release rare native pool frogs. The surrounding fields are
teeming with wildflowers and rough where Iron Age pigs have turned over the
soil, making for a bumpy ride. Fording a stream, we startle a trio of wild
Konik ponies, sending them galloping across the hills.
“You get an idea what we’re heading for here,” Gow shouts over the roar of the
engine, his bushy white beard in perfect harmony with the returning wilderness.
“Every year it’s changing.”
Gow’s efforts to return this former sheep farm to a haven of biodiversity have
made him a poster child of the broader rewilding movement. But his real passion
lies in bringing back lost species – the animals and plants that were once
thriving in Britain but, over centuries of hunting, intensive farming and
countless other human interventions, have been erased from the landscape.
He’s played a pivotal role in restoring species like water voles, white storks
and – perhaps most famously – Eurasian beavers to England, stoking plenty of
controversy along the way. He breeds glowworms, harvest mice and turtle doves,
too.
“The reality was that, when we were farming here, we killed everything,” he
says. “We’re not going to change the world by doing what we do [now]. But we’re
going to set an example of how it can be done.”"
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-rail-education-ethiopia-conservation-congo/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
