Category Archives: Rewilding

How a fatal bear attack led an Italian commune to rally against rewilding

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Brown bears, introduced into Trentino province 20 years ago, have begun to clash with the local human population

Franca Gherardini used to cherish the sublime views from her home in Caldes, a village surrounded by forests on the slopes of the Brenta Dolomites in northern Italy’s Trentino province.

But now she tries to shut out the scene as much as possible, rolling down the window canopy in the morning to avoid looking towards the area where her son, Andrea Papi, 26, was killed by a bear.

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‘Really special’: Farm near London to be rewilded to enable new housing in Essex

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Farm north of London to be returned to something like pasture once enjoyed by Anglo-Saxon king

It was once woodland where Harold Godwinson, the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king, rode in pursuit of deer. Over recent decades, the hillside with a panoramic view of London has become arable fields, pony paddocks and a Christmas tree plantation.

But now Harold’s Park, a 200-hectare (500 acre) farm just north of the M25 on the edge of the capital, is to be rewilded and returned to something like the tangled wood pasture once enjoyed by King Harold.

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Backpack-wearing dogs enlisted to rewild urban nature reserve in Lewes

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Organisers hope dogs will mimic behaviour of wolves that in past would have helped disperse wildflower seeds

Backpack-wearing dogs are being enlisted to “act like wolves” to help rewild an urban nature reserve in the East Sussex town of Lewes.

Before wolves were persecuted to extinction in the UK in about 1760, they were known to roam large areas, typically covering 12 miles (20km) or more each night.

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The gardener who took a Canadian city to court for the right to not mow his lawn

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Missisauga officials have twice forcibly cut Wolf Ruck’s grass and billed him, after he decided to rewild his garden

Most mornings, Wolf Ruck walks the mown paths in his yard in Mississauga, Ontario, watching for insects landing on the goldenrod, birds feeding on native seed heads, and chipmunk kits playing in the tall grass.

The septuagenarian artist, film-maker and former Olympic canoeist began rewilding his garden with native plants three years ago, as part of a growing movement across Canada towards replacing water-thirsty lawns with “naturalised gardens”.

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EU passes law to restore 20% of bloc’s land and sea by end of decade

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Narrow win for supporters after fierce farmers’ protests, loss of green seats to far right and political wrangling

The EU has passed a landmark law to protect nature after a knife-edge vote, ending a months-long deadlock among member states spooked by fierce protests from farmers.

The law, which has proven to be the most controversial pillar of the European Green Deal and nearly failed at the final hurdle, sets a target to restore at least 20% of the EU’s land and sea by the end of the decade.

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Campaigners urge Prince William to rewild Dartmoor farmland

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William became largest private landholder in the national park when he inherited Duchy of Cornwall

Campaigners are urging Prince William to invest in significant rewilding across swathes of Dartmoor’s predominantly farmed land.

The land became William’s after he inherited the Duchy of Cornwall, an extensive landholding including the largest privately owned area of Dartmoor national park, from his father, King Charles, when he succeeded to the throne.

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‘They were chilled’: bated breath as beavers released in Northumberland

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Animals make first return to the county in 400 years as National Trust introduces family of four to Wallington estate

It was a genuinely tense tale of the riverbank as a family of four beavers were released into the Northumberland countryside on Wednesday, the first time in more than 400 years that the animals are making the county their home.

Would they even come out of their cages? Would they be as feisty coming out as they apparently were going in? Would they be happy with their new surroundings?

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Dancing Capercaillie bird makes a tentative comeback in Scotland

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Exclusive: Ecologists say there are early signs that the population is recovering in remote forests

It is a discotheque for Britain’s biggest type of grouse. Before dawn, male capercaillie will begin their courtship rituals, their black tail feathers erect and fanning out, chests puffed out, their heads thrust high into the cold spring air.

Their dancefloors are forest clearings in the Highlands which echo the males’ wheezing, popping and clattering mating calls. Often perched in surrounding pine trees, hens will carefully watch as their potential mates compete to win their affection.

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Britain is not ready for reintroduction of lynx and wolves, Ray Mears warns

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Better management of existing apex predators and compensation schemes for farmers and gamekeepers needed, broadcaster says

Lynx and wolves are likely to become feared and hated if they are reintroduced into Britain’s forests, the adventurer and broadcaster Ray Mears has warned.

Speaking at Cheltenham science festival, he said Britain was not ready for such rewilding schemes, despite the potential ecological benefits.

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Number of ‘coronation meadows’ marking queen’s reign tops 100

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Scheme that began to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee in 2012 has thrived, project audit finds

Wildflower meadows planted a decade ago to celebrate 60 years of the late queen’s reign have thrived, with 101 new fields of flowers created since the scheme was launched.

King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, worked with Plantlife and the Wildlife Trusts to launch ”coronation meadows”, identifying 60 species-rich meadows from which to take donor seeds – one meadow for each year of the queen’s reign at the time.

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Field of fresh cow pats welcomes first dung beetles to be rewilded in France

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Sixty of the keystone species released near Bordeaux to feast on waste from wild cattle and help restore a vital habitat on the Atlantic coast

In a forest clearing filled with cowpats, French history is being made: the country’s first translocation of dung beetles in a nature reserve near Bordeaux.

With the same pomp and ceremony afforded to the release of an Iberian lynx or a European bison, about 60 “ball rolling” insects were brought to the marshy forests of Étang de Cousseau in south-west France on Wednesday to restore a vital ecosystem function on the Atlantic coast.

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BBC will not broadcast Attenborough episode over fear of ‘rightwing backlash’

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Exclusive: Decision to make episode about natural destruction available only on iPlayer angers programme-makers

The BBC has decided not to broadcast an episode of Sir David Attenborough’s flagship new series on British wildlife because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians and the rightwing press, the Guardian has been told.

The decision has angered the programme-makers and some insiders at the BBC, who fear the corporation has bowed to pressure from lobbying groups with “dinosaurian ways”.

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Tories will not reach ‘embarrassingly poor’ nature targets by 2030, Labour says

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Opposition to unveil plan to reverse biodiversity loss rather than simply halting it, which is government’s current target

The government will not be able to achieve its nature targets by 2030, even though they are “embarrassingly poor”, the shadow environment minister and leading wildlife groups have said.

Next week at the Cop15 biodiversity conference in Montreal, Alex Sobel will be discussing Labour’s “science-led, joined-up plan to tackle the climate and ecological emergency”. The plan will aim to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, rather than simply halting it, which is the government’s current target.

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‘It’s like winning the lottery’: Lincolnshire rewilding plan welcomed by some… others not so happy

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Project promises to create jobs and restore biodiversity, but locals say it is taking food-growing land out of production

The rolling fields south of Grantham are scenic, but these huge expanses of wheat and beans are almost bereft of insects in summer. In autumn, a few skylarks sing and the occasional buzzard soars, but there is precious little life in the landscape.

But soon a 1,525-acre swath of this productive Lincolnshire farmland will be brimming with wildlife, according to a new company that aims to restore biodiversity and make money by rewilding farmland.

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How Truss’s post-Brexit farming policy descended into chaos

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Rumours rife as farmers fear PM plans U-turn on financial subsidy measures to improve environment

The chaos in the English countryside began with the click of a civil servant’s mouse. At the end of last week, farmers who had been working with the government on environmental subsidy schemes saw that their regular meetings about it had been removed from their online diaries without warning.

This appeared to hint at what had been feared – that the new post-Brexit farming subsidy scheme was in danger of being scrapped.

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Buzz stops: bus shelter roofs turned into gardens for bees and butterflies

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Bee bus stops first appeared in the Dutch city of Utrecht. Now the UK is planning for more than 1,000 and there is growing interest across Europe and in Canada and Australia

Butterflies and bees are getting their own transport network as “bee bus stops” start to pop up around UK cities and across Europe. Humble bus shelter roofs are being turned into riots of colour, with the number of miniature gardens – full of pollinator-friendly flora such as wild strawberries, poppies and pansies – set to increase by 50% in the UK by the end of this year.

Leicester is leading the charge with 30 bee bus stops installed since 2021. Derby has 18, and there are others in Southhampton, Newcastle, Sunderland, Derby, Oxford, Cardiff and Glasgow. Brighton council installed one last year after a petition was signed by almost 50,000 people.

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Nature-friendly farming does not reduce productivity, study finds

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Results of 10-year project reveal that rewilding areas can boost biodiversity and crop yields

Putting farmland aside for nature does not have a negative effect on food security, a study has found.

A 10-year project by the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology revealed that nature-friendly farming methods boost biodiversity without reducing average yields.

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Making a comeback: rewilding in Europe gets a £4m funding boost

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Native wildlife will be reintroduced across Europe in a bid to reduce atmospheric carbon and promote tourism

A European environmental organisation is looking to expand its number of rewilding landscapes – areas where endangered wildlife is reintroduced and protected – after being awarded a grant of £4.1m.

The grant has been pledged to Rewilding Europe in the hope of scaling up rewilding efforts throughout several parts of the European continent.

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Wild bison return to UK for first time in thousands of years

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The gentle giants released in Kent should transform a commercial pine forest into a vibrant natural woodland

Early on Monday morning, three gentle giants wandered out of a corral in the Kent countryside to become the first wild bison to roam in Britain for thousands of years.

The aim is for the animals’ natural behaviour to transform a dense commercial pine forest into a vibrant natural woodland. Their taste for bark will kill some trees and their bulk will open up trails, letting light spill on to the forest floor, while their love of rolling around in dust baths will create more open ground. All this should allow new plants, insects, lizards, birds and bats to thrive.

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Wildland: inside the Scottish glen where nature has been set free

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Rewilding has become a mantra in one Cairngorms glen – but some see initiatives to restore its forestland as a threat

Glen Feshie is one of the magnificent valleys on the north-west side of the Cairngorm massif where the forest has been released from the tyranny of grouse and deer. During the deer-stalking centuries of the 1800s and 1900s, there were 50 deer per square kilometre. Now there are one or two, and the critically endangered capercaillie are coming back. This is the place, I’ve heard, to look for the natural treeline in Scotland.

I arrive in the evening, the day before midsummer, and pitch my tent by the river. Scotland’s right to roam allows wild camping to an extent those south of the border can only dream of. The brown water is dark in the depths under the bridge, and cold. In the still-bright sunlight I walk up the valley and come to a spot where the path widens and a vista of sheer grey hills opens out. This was the setting for The Monarch of the Glen, a famous painting by Landseer of a princely 12-point stag framed by the crags above the valley.

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