Uncertain Nature: Expressing Rewilding in the Landscape

Food security and rewilding have disjointed pathways as we become more careful but without any plans to guide us

A complicated political landscape has emerged as communities lack real tangible food security plans which don’t consider food supply and demand or how new agriculture production will be created. At the end, both nature and humans might suffer. Examining what is happening in Europe will give North Americans a chance to problem solve – or not.

Bringing nature close to us is important. For the most part our perception of what nature is becomes different from person to person. For some, nature might mean a city park, but for others it might be a remote old growth forest. What we do know is that in every case being closer to nature has positive results. It might be our exposure to healthy phytoncides, or perhaps it’s the experience of getting away from steel, concrete and screens

It won’t be easy but we need to rewild the human-to-nature interface – if we don’t who will?

We are now discovering that there are additional layers that might bring us better health. Getting our hands dirty helping nature recover from degradation might result in an improved gut biome from having our hands in the soil as well as an enhanced meaning and purpose as we feel that we are building a tangible relationship with the natural world and helping her regenerate.

We are also discovering that if our food crops interface with wild environments that this will reflect on our health and the health of a vast number of wild species.

How we grow nature within ourselves will serve as a wider expression between humans and nature on Earth. This process of growth and expansion could be described as “rewilding”.

The idea of rewilding has captivated the interest of scientists as they seek to understand biodiversity and various human interactions with the natural world. Rewilding has also made its way in the mainstream lexicon as a concept where a community or an individual can bridge their lifestyle closer to nature – which includes food, medicines and the environment.

Rewilding as a movement to restore ravaged landscapes to their wilderness before human intervention has many dimensions as science and our society explores a more wild perspective, but what does the true essence of the word really mean? As food, medicine and our planet transitions it will become important for everyone to better understand the long view of what returning to a more wilder idea of things really means.

Europe's abandoned farmlands could find new life through rewilding, a quarter of the European continent, 117 million hectares, is primed with rewilding opportunities, according to researchers in a report published  August 15th in the Cell Press journal, Current Biology. They provide a roadmap for countries to meet the 2030 European Biodiversity Strategy's goals to protect 30% of land, with 10% of those areas strictly under conservation.

The team found that 70% of the rewilding opportunities in Europe lie in colder climates. Northern Europe -- particularly Scandinavia, Scotland, and the Baltic states -- and several highland regions in the Iberian Peninsula show the greatest potential.

"There are many areas in Europe that have a low enough human footprint, as well as the presence of key animal species, to potentially be rewilded," says first author and biogeographer Miguel B. Araújo of the National Museum of Natural Sciences, CSIC, Spain, and the University of Évora, Portugal.

"We also highlight the need for different strategies depending on the conditions of each region."

The researchers established criteria to determine areas with rewilding potentials: extensive tracts of land, covering more than 10,000 hectares, with little human disturbance that feature vital species. Based on the size of the land and the types of animals that inhabit the area, they further identified two strategies for rewilding -- passive and active.

Passive rewilding relies on natural regeneration, where animals gradually move back into abandoned areas on their own. The approach works best in regions with a healthy population of key herbivores, such as deer, ibex, moose, and rabbits, as well as carnivores, such as wolves, bears, and lynxes. Regions without key herbivore or carnivore species would require active rewilding by reintroducing the missing species to kickstart the ecosystem's recovery. Both strategies aim to create a self-sustaining, biodiverse landscape.

"I often refer to herbivores as the ecosystem engineers as they graze and shape the vegetation, while predators would be the architects creating 'fear landscapes' that herbivores avoid," says Araújo.

"The interaction between herbivores and carnivores creates mosaic patterns in the landscapes, essential for biodiversity."

Some countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Scandinavian nations, are positioned to reach their conservation goals if they adopt the study's suggested rewilding zones and strategies.

However, given that Europe is densely populated with humans, other countries wouldn't meet their conservation aims if they relied solely on the study's recommendations, highlighting the need for alternative conservation approaches. These countries include Ireland, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark.

"Conservation strategies involving ecological restoration of densely populated areas could help some countries reach conservation goals," says Araújo. "Countries could reclaim land to turn it into conservation areas or establish networks of small, protected habitats. Traditional multi-use landscapes, like the oak parklands in the Iberian Peninsula and various extensive agricultural and forestry systems across Europe, could also help if managed sustainably."

As governments and organizations continue to invest in land conservation, the researchers hope their findings and framework will help these efforts to acquire or manage areas with the greatest potential for successful rewilding. However, despite the prospects, the researchers caution that time is of the essence.

"We're racing against time," says Araújo. "The areas that look most promising for rewilding today may not be the same in 50 years due to the impacts of climate change."

This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and the European Union's Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme.

There is not a consensus when we consider the farm-to-nature interface because we now rely on a global food supply chain. Rewilding, organic farming and the 'nature friendly farming' measures included in some government conservation policies risk worsening the global biodiversity crisis by reducing how much food is produced in a region, driving up food imports and increasing environmental damage overseas.

In an article published in the journal Nature, Professor Ian Bateman of the University of Exeter and Professor Andrew Balmford of the University of Cambridge urged policy-makers to consider a bolder approach known as 'land sparing', which they argue is cheaper, more effective, and avoids the displacement of food production and loss of wildlife habitats overseas.

Land sparing involves finding lower-impact ways to boost yields in farmed areas in order to make space for larger, non-farmed areas of the landscape to be put aside for nature without increasing imports and damaging overseas wildlife.

The approach has been overlooked by policymakers, they say, because of a failure to consider the wider consequences of changes in land management, arguing that changes that boost wildlife locally seem superficially attractive, but if food production is reduced there are unavoidable knock-on effects elsewhere, which must also be taken into account.

They also cite the influence of the 'Big Farm' lobby in maintaining the status quo in agricultural policy, with land-sharing subsidies allocated using a flat rate per hectare, which disproportionately benefits the biggest farms -- resulting in the largest 12 per cent of farms taking 50 per cent of all UK taxpayer subsidies.

Their article debunks some of the benefits to biodiversity of three widely-advocated green farming approaches.

They argue that while policy funded measures such as reducing the use of pesticides and fertilizers can sometimes increase populations of more common animals and plants on farms it does little for endangered birds, invertebrates, plants and fungi species that need larger stretches of non-farmed habitat -- and by lowering yields can also make matters far worse for overseas biodiversity.

Rewilding initiatives, where large areas of land are taken out of farming, can indeed benefit locally endangered species. But unless other areas see compensating increases in food output then this reduces local production, increases demand for food imports, and so damages biodiversity overseas.

They also argue that organic farming, where crops are produced without manufactured fertilizers and modern pesticides, is even more likely to be damaging. Relatively few species will benefit in the farmed area, and the substantially lower yields from this type of farming risk greatly increasing the need for food imports, and hence a country's impacts on biodiversity elsewhere.

Land sparing, in contrast, involves retaining or creating sizeable blocks of unfarmed land containing larger populations of the many species that depend on natural habitats, as well as boosting farm yields elsewhere in the region so that overall production is maintained or even increased.

Promising methods to boost crop and livestock yields more sustainably than current high-yield practices include genomic screening and gene editing to accelerate animal and crop breeding; using new advances in aquaculture to produce high value foods with much lower environmental impacts; and, in tropical countries, greater access to improved pasture and veterinary care.

The researchers point to field studies on five continents that consistently show how land sparing delivers far greater biodiversity gains than conventional 'nature friendly farming' policies.

They say it is likely to cost a great deal less as well: a survey of UK farmers last year found that land sparing could deliver the same biodiversity outcomes for birds as conventional approaches but at 48 per cent of the cost to taxpayers, and with a 21 per cent lower impact on food production.

Ian Bateman, a Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Exeter Business School who has advised seven UK secretaries of state for the environment in the past decade, said: "The stakes are too high for policymakers to continue to ignore the promise of land sparing when so much research demonstrates that it is a far more effective approach than many of the strategies being deployed.

"Unless researchers and policymakers assess the overall, global effects of interventions aimed at addressing biodiversity loss and climate change, poor decisions that are unsupported by the data will at best under-deliver, and at worst exacerbate existential threats posed by the extinction and climate crises."

Andrew Balmford, a Professor of Conservation Science at the University of Cambridge who has led 20 years' work investigating how to reconcile food production with biodiversity conservation, added: "This issue has become even more urgent since last December when many countries agreed to help meet the Convention on Biological Diversity's goal of protecting 30 per cent of the planet's land and oceans by 2030. Exactly how this 30 per cent will be put aside -- and how we meet humanity's growing needs on the rest of planet -- will in large part determine the biodiversity consequences of this ambitious commitment."

The Bridge

Rewilding a Forest Service Road Bridge

Here’s a short video that describes how a new bridge impacts a remote riparian area in British Columbia and how we will attempt to solve the problem. Every year the industrialization of wild places creates more ecological damage and the economy is not big enough to do the repairs. The science is too slow to offer up solutions and when they do “the system” is far too slow to action those solutions.

It is up to you and I to recovery these spaces – quickly.

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