Wilding by Isabella TreeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
When economics told the owners of the land at Knepp, in West Sussex, that their methods of intensive farming there were becoming no longer possible they made a brave and adventurous decision: leave it all to nature! Isabella Tree’s amazing book, ‘Wilding’, relates the story of what happened next over the following ten plus years. If you are interested, or concerned about the desperate situation in which the natural world finds itself due to the agriculture, industry, deforestation and population growth of the human species, then you will find this book inspirational. Even if you do not belong to those worried people, often despicably described as ‘tree-huggers’, but like to simply enjoy the natural environment, then reading ‘Wilding’ will cause you to think; to think that perhaps there is a better way that we humans may live alongside nature without destroying it. This destruction is often either deliberate, through the use of pesticides and herbicides, or unintentionally through our ever expanding towns and cities. It may cause to remind you that we no longer see as many insects, like butterflies and moths, bees, wasps and beetles, about as when we were children. All of which creatures are part of enormous food chains and food webs that include birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals.
Isabella Tree and her husband, Charlie Burrell, left behind intensive farming and experimented with biodiversity, eventually achieving far more success than even they could have hoped. The list of creatures, plants and fungi that returned to their land when given the freedom to do so was incredible. They introduced breeds of cattle, pigs, deer and horses that would enjoy ranging across their land freely, much as the original wilder breeds would have done throughout Britain and Europe centuries ago. The book goes on to describe an amazing list of animals like nightingales, peregrine falcons, purple emperor butterflies, fish and even earthworms that began to recolonise there once the ecosystems were allowed to develop naturally and at their own pace. The book’s cover picture features the turtle dove as an eminently suitable example of a disappeared species from the British countryside, but which has returned in numbers to Knepp.
If we are to become truly serious about encouraging our young to save their planet, a la David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg et al, then this book alongside George Monbiot’s ‘Feral’ should be taught as part of required reading in schools and colleges. It is not, as might be claimed by some, merely an evangelical rant about the loss of wildlife and natural environment, since it pays detailed respect to academic studies about the difficulties involved in rewilding our ‘tamed’ lands; land drained, cleared of scrub etc, in order to support farming and the production of food for a growing human population. There is a lengthy discussion within these vitally important pages about whether Britain was ever covered throughout by closed canopy forest, and just how important in nature the oak trees would have been (and still are) before armadas and fleets of wooden sailing ships were needed for fighting wars. On another tack the book tells of older generations than the post war baby-boomers, such as mine, who could recall walking through countryside filled with hawthorn, hazel, wild roses and even, heaven forfend ragwort. While more recent farmers felt that if their ‘traditional’ methods were undone and the land was left uncultivated, it would appear neglected and not natural, there were those whose childhood included those elements of wildness that saw it as wonderful and therefore truly ‘natural’ – not at all repugnant as it was claimed. Their ideas of ‘natural’ included profusions of ‘weeds’ i.e. wildflowers and the sounds of insects and birds, most of which has become scarce in recent decades.
Isabella Tree’s book concludes with an in-depth look at what has become of soil on the majority of agricultural land; how it has become depleted of structure and humus, how it is easily run off during wet weather and usually contains too much of many harmful chemicals that find their way into groundwater, rivers and streams. Thus our many years of relatively cheap food has an extra cost that continues to be funded by our environment. She even writes challenging some of the more modern ideas of conservation, challenging what seems to be various wrong classifications of the many species of woodland creatures for example. Left to their own devices it could be that their habitat would not become adapted to fit in with how we have changed the land after all. These broader ideas had me thinking about my own acceptance of conservation projects, especially when we learn here that soil restored naturally will hold far more carbon than soil that is constantly replenished by man-made fertilisers. It is to be hoped that there are many decision makers within government, manufacturing and agriculture that find time to read this extremely compelling book.
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