Councils, rewilding and new frontiers for RewilderBeast

This blog started as a place for me to explore ideas on rewilding in the UK. It is happening here …

Wild facts from the past – The UK on Safari

Mega-farms are no friend to the rewilding movement in the UK

The rise of nearly 800 mega-farms raises serious concerns over animal welfare, antibiotic resistance and environmental pollution. But it also poses a threat to everything that the rewilding movement stands for.

Wild Wales? Welsh lamb and why the government is wrong to promise the industry support post-Brexit

It’s hard to hear much above the bleating ruckus of the near 10 million sheep stripping the Welsh countryside bare. But then it’s perhaps no wonder voices are drowned out beneath the humming and baaing of those presiding over the land use for rural Wales, when sheep outnumber people three to one.

National Parks in the UK – rewilding could transform them into ‘Natural Parks’

This week, it was ‘National Parks Week’. But buried beneath the celebrations and engagement events there are stark questions to be asked about the state of the 15 National Parks that the authority claims to represent “Britain’s breathing spaces.”

Why we need whales in UK seas – a whiteboard animation

  Whales are an important part of nature. A short whiteboard animation on whales, strandings in the UK, whale hunting …

Why rewilders should be vegan

Rewilding and veganism are like two sides of a mutually symbiotic relationship between a cleaner fish and a mantaray. The vegans clear all the vacuous animal agriculture from the rewilder’s back and in return, they feed the soul from a vibrant recovering ecosystem. Here is a list of reasons why, if you’re a vegan, you should support rewilding, or if you’re a rewilder, you should embrace veganism. A UK case study.

Is Pokemon Go a call to rewild our lives?

Reflecting on my childhood and the discovery of nature deficit disorder, could Pokemon Go and augmented reality apps lead the charge on rewilding in the UK?

Brexit and the fear of the non-native – why lynxes, wolves and wildcats should be given ‘British citizenship’ and rewilding, a passport

A curious legal artefact introduced by the coalition government; ‘The Infrastructure Act’ of 2015, classes species at one time native in plenty, once driven extinct, as outlaws in their own lands.

Brexit and the fear of the non-native – why beavers, boar, buzzards and bears should be given ‘British citizenship’ and rewilding, a passport

There is a strange anti-native malaise sweeping the UK. Brexit built on this anti-immigration rhetoric, perpetuating fears that ‘open doors’ meant closed doors on job opportunities for a perceived ‘British citizen’, locked doors on housing and swinging the UK wide open to terrorism. All these issues are complex and multifaceted in a way the campaigns in the lead up to the EU Referendum failed to communicate – instead we were given a scapegoat on which to pour all our problems. These fears, I believe, have become part of an ideology that extends into all aspects of our British culture – a culture of fear, blame and ignorance. And it extends into the realm of conservation too.