Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
For thousands of years, the English countryside has never been so empty of people and animals as it is now. The part of West Dorset where I live was once a busy network of small farmsteads, most with fewer than 100 acres, keeping Red Devon cattle for meat and milk. Today, the old farm names on the Ordnance Survey map are a roll call of lost activity…
It can’t be like “We need a policy for a rewilded childhood”, because we could be waiting forever, and that ain’t going to happen. And we haven’t got time to wait forever I don’t believe. So it’s what do we all do to rewild our own family, our own community, our own school?
Between them, Doug and Kris Tompkins spent the last 25 years working on one of the most ambitious conservation and rewilding projects on Earth, creating protected national parks in vulnerable areas of Chile and Argentina to provide a vital refuge for endangered wildlife at a time when the human demands on the non-human world increase daily.
More farmers in the countryside are needed for the sake of both rewilding and sustainable agriculture.
Soil is Mother Earth’s gut – its microorganisms digest her food while her flora produce the necessary bacteria and yeasts to keep her healthy.
What is a domesticated yet wild landscape?
Aniol Esteban is head of Environmental Economics at the New Economics Foundation. I started by asking what, for him, is the link between nature and wellbeing?
You have to have a vision, something better than the standard environmental vision which is – follow us and you’ll get a slightly less crap world than you would otherwise have got.
If we want to construct a healthy and resilient world for ourselves and our fellow creatures, we could do worse than look to the lowly beavers for hints on how it can be done.
“If everyone disenchanted with this culture decided to wander off into the lonesome wilderness, it would have absolutely no effect on its workings,” writes Miles Olson, in his book Unlearn-Rewild.
But why should we care about what happens to some sheep farmers in a remote corner of Britain, far from the front lines of catchier environmental stories like the disappearing Amazon rainforests, China’s sinking coastal cities, or rampant poaching to feed the illicit ivory trade?
The Summer issue of STIR is rich with thoughtful, provocative articles on the commons…
