How do you actually rewild a property? | FT Food Revolution
Vložit
- čas přidán 16. 07. 2022
- The word rewilding can conjure up images of going back in time to a landscape of wild animals and deep forest. Its popularity is growing in the UK, but how exactly do you go about rewilding, and why is it being linked, in some cases, to greenwashing? The FT’s Leslie Hook visits two properties at different stages of the rewilding process to discover more.
#sustainability #rewilding #environment
See if you get the FT for free as a student (ft.com/schoolsarefree) or start a £1 trial: subs.ft.com/spa3_trial?segmen....
► To learn more, visit our website - channels.ft.com/en/foodrevolu...
► Watch more videos from this series here - • FT Food Revolution
► Check out our Community tab for more stories on the economy.
► Listen to our podcasts: www.ft.com/podcasts
► Follow us on Instagram: / financialtimes'
I'd wish we would be more aware of something like this, it should be on the news and promoted more often!
My heart gives a little jump for joy every time I hear of people who are rewilding places on our planet. True rewilding is an absolute gift to the earth, and to we humans. Biodiverse wild spaces enable us to re-connect with the earth and ourselves. They allow us time out, time to just breathe, and time to heal. Any people involved in true rewilding projects get a huge thumbs up from me! Thank you to you all! 🏞️👍😊🤸
Keep up the fantastic work, and let's all work together to protect our planet! 👏
Well done, Financial Times. We need more of this please.👏
Rewilding needs firm definitions that are hard to misuse. Instead of using a carbon standard, which can be easy to circumvent, use standards of numbers of native plants and wildlife, water quality, types of habitat, soil health. Build laws around those standards, robust monitoring, assistance for projects, and penalties for those that are trying to call a Sitka spruce monocrop for wood pellets "rewilding".
What we all going to eat mate ?
@@truthandfreedom9849 Food. Food can and is grown in rewilded forest systems. The people in the video were selling beef. Cattle can be managed to sequester carbon in the soil and their actions in the landscape become beneficial. There are other forest crops like mushrooms, both edible and medicinal, and nuts. Chestnuts, for example, 2 mature trees producing nuts that have a similar nutritional profile to grain, can replace all grain for 1 person for a year. Mature tree means 25 years or older. The old forest chestnut giants produce more than enough nuts each for more than one person a year.
If one rewilds thoughtfully, choosing a high proportion of edible species, plenty of food is produced.
Just because some places are being rewilded does not mean all agriculture disappears.
@@permiebird937 you need to do some research Mate ....
They are throttling the food supply and using rewilding as an excuse ...
You will be eating bugs just so you can look at bison .... Most stupid swop ever
@@permiebird937 also ... What exactly do we do for food for the next 25 years while the 60 millions chestnut trees grow?
Also is there even room for 60 million chestnut trees and still room for other stuff as well?
I don't think so chum you clearly are talking propagandistic rubbish
@Truth And Freedom We eat other foods as we slowly transition from the current system to a new regenerative system. That is the only reasonable way, and likely to take more than 25 years, regardless. Besides Chestnuts are only one example of edible tree crops. There is a lot of education that will be needed to accompany new food systems.
There is easily room for 60 million chestnuts. They can be grown in cities, suburbs and the countryside, and other crops, like hazelnuts, mushrooms, a number of berry varieties, pigs, sheep, goats, and cattle can all live and thrive under the chestnuts. You get multiple crops out of a single piece of land.
The way that the current food system abuses the soil is leaving the world in a situation where we only have about 50 years left of crop yields before these overworked soils become too degraded to continue to feed humanity. We already use all the arable croplands on the planet, and frequently build on those lands making them unusable for food production.
What is your solution? What I am suggesting is already being successfully done in places like some of the sites in the video, plus a lot others spread around the world. If you are so ready to dismiss a successful climate beneficial food system, what do you propose be done?
I wish the US matched (proportionally) the UK's subsidies for re-wilding. Most of our agriculture is done by massive corporations, so if they could receive tax credits by re-wilding parts of their land, that could have an enormous aggregate impact.
People also need space to live somewhere
This goon obviously hasn't met many farmers if he thinks big corporations handle even half of it.....
bugger off mate. no human deserves to live in such a tyranny.
And what shall people eat?
@@thurinaradan7135 Knepp estate was a farm with poor soil quality that was no longer economically viable to farm intensively.
awareness is the key to recreating habitats
Man, this is so wonderful. I have been praying to God for this kind of wisdom to flourish among humans because nature is invaluable yet fools set a price on it and over harvest it’s treasures, leaving us with nothing and eventually the extinction of our species.
I am very glad to see serious acceptance of this ecological aspect to improve modern agriculture in Europe and North America. It's a need that has a time and a value and can be implemented with some additional training and some modifications to techniques and equipment. The results can be financial rewarding because of the reduction of Input Costs: fertilizer, pesticides, and hormones for various beef and other meat stock.
There is a transition underway and it is urgent that unlike the EV adoption rate in North America, this Regenerative type farming and ranching and the Rewilding of many agricultural marginal lands continue unabated.
Please read more. Please help as you can. Changes in Agriculture will bring very profound changes to our ecology and climate.
"If you want nature back you don't go out and plant trees". I disagree with this. Yes, Knepp might be the 'purist' and most perfect way to rewild an area, but if you have half an acre, and plant native trees like Oak, Rowan, Hawthorn etc you WILL get nature back. Insect numbers will increase, then that attracts birds, and they can nest in bushes. They then poop all over the field and disperse wildflower seeds.
Yea im seeing a whole range of different defintions of "rewilding",some are calling just planting anything in your garden or flower pots rewilding while others say you must not touch anything at all and let nature take over.
In my area,south west of Ireland any place that is left alone to nature just becomes completely covered in brambles,gorse,rushes,ferns,ivy and moss and not much of anything else gets a chance to grow as the light is cut out.Tried only cutting the lawn in september but all i got each year was long grass!! (what a shock)Not the Van Gogh type meadows ive been promised.
so from now on im just intervening and planting what i want,I suspect a lot of these "100% rewilding" projects are sneakily doing the same aswell!
Yes, we had the good luck to be able to acquire a smallholding on the edge of the Peak District about 25 years ago and we have planted a few thousand trees concentrating on about 30 truly native species omitting only those that are unlikely to survive in this area. We also have areas that have been left untouched to allow a woodland edge environment. The process takes time and we are only now starting to see the benefits.
@@Gos1234567 Are there any large agricultural areas nearby or a river or small minor stream nearby with large agricultural areas upstream? Because what youve described seems like a problem I personally have too with my small meadow and the root of this problem is the soil having to much nutritions because of the fields nearby which get fertilized regurarely. The fertilizier puts to much nutritions in the soil which benefits grasses which supress other plants like flowers so it always ends up as just large grass. I personally countered it by making a large bed with stone walls where I seed flowers every spring. The stone walls create a habitat for many species like lizards or insects or mice and the flowers can grow there undisturbed. The bed is in place for like 2 years now and the amount of insects and other species like birds has (sadly only slightly since its a large area of fields and grass lands and my bed isnt that big) increased and noe finally wild flowers start to thrive slightly better in the other areas of my land which was purely grass land. So from my personal experience I could suggest you to mix classical rewilding with your own artifical support in order to create a good garden. Your artificial support is meant to cancel out the bad effects other humans nearby have and then nature can do the rest. Thats the typical definition of rewildiing too, giving it a kickstarter like a flowerbe3d or rewilding bisons and the rest is natures play.
The Financial time needs to talk about Ecosia they are a search engine that plants trees
planting trees are good
never seen the real significant results but only written text
What an amazing movement.
Great video! Thanks!
Excellent
What's substidy?🏴
Without large herbivores ecosystem dies.
Its interesting to see its supported by the Rabobank 0.03. The bank who is more of less resposible for the nitrogen crisis in the Netherlands.
What nitrogen crisis? Do you mean the overuse of nitrogen?
Just plant trees and plant plant plants. That's the answer. And of course, do not interfere with nature (with TV shows like "Home in the Tree"). And you will see the benefits of NATURE with the transformation of our countryside like it used to be long before the so-called "industrial revolution". This was the turning point essentially.
There is no "just this" or "just that." Each damaged habitat requires it's own approach. Sometimes it's planting trees, sometimes it's cutting them, sometimes both. Sometimes it's flooding the area, sometimes it's draining it, sometimes it's restoring the right flooding-draining cycle.
This is why we need ecologists.
Watch "Mossy earth" videos, they explain it.
@@Kurtlane
Above that, what you've said my friend, is "just plant trees and plant plant plant". In Scandinavia is just that result. There was no such thing-like INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION BLA BLA in Scandinavia. You can introduce Tigers here in Scandinavia.
@@tadasblindavicius8889 The "just plant trees" has backfired incredibly in many places including scandinavia because the plantations are practically non-native monocultures and have severly reduced biodiversity.
@@SpaceMonkeyMDVireland,the sitka spruce and they ruin the land!!
The plant trees approach is what has ruined german forests. Germany was likely covered by 80% of forest in ancient times and has decreased to like 5% in the 1600s due to human cutting down all the wood, so humans started to replant trees, favoring the ones growing as fast as possible... Essentially creating monocultures of sometimes not native trees, ending up killing the biodiversity even more than it had already suffered during the large plain period. Planting trees is a good approach but it has to be thought through well
where is clarksons farm ??
Cotswolds
We need more large predators.
What you see in this video are examples of deer eating everything, and that is a major problem as these creatures face almost no predator (other than a very few humans. Far fewer than in historic times, and at a time when bears, wolves and lynx were helping to control these animals).
Also, there has been this mad plan to create Rabbit Hotels - a helping hand to an invasive, non-native species, another browser in addition to the superflous population of deer.
They conserve hares - another non-native species (introduced by the Romans).
Then they add bison, yet 'another' browser.
But, of course, mention introducing predators and the animal farmers get vocal (when there are ways to protect their animals) and the Disney bunch get all teary-eyed and blubbery.
But if you want rewilding balanced, then you have to be hard-hearted and balance it properly.
Otherwise there aren't going to be any new tree seedlings worth a rub growing in this country, because all the huge, strong, pampered, fast breeding browsers will have eaten them all.
A few wolves in a cage simply isn't enough.
The amount of land required to feed each person has been and continues to get smaller. And if we want to drastically reduce agricultural land further we can eat less meat, freeing up vast areas of land for this sort of project.
you can only take my Liberty from from my COLD DEAD HANDS.
I'll fight you on the pastures.
And where will thoes calories come from that arnt coming from meat anymore ??
Vege farming takes 4 times more space to make same calories as meat ......
You will starve us all to death with your cultish thinking
I would also fight to the death for meat so I hope Ur in training Mr Vege cos I am
I was vegetarian for 40 years and vegan for 4. But veganism near killed me. I was so unwell last Christmas and my husband, whom I persuaded to become vegan at the same time, ended up in hospital for 17 days.
We returned to eating fish and dairy, and feel a great deal better.
When I was a vegetarian/vegan, I never, ever persuaded anyone outside my family to do as we did. I never pushed either vegetarianism or veganism, even on my closest friends.
I regret persuading my husband, as he now has what I fear may be a permanent consequence of my decision (which I did because I wanted to make mealtimes simpler for me).
So...
Moral of the story is, keep your dietary opinions to yourself and don't tell other people what they can and cannot eat. A purely plant based diet doesn't suit everyone.
I now feel better than I have in 'decades,' during which time I had thought I was merely suffering from the effects of increasing age.
It was diet to blame.
If people want to eat meat, let them. If they don't, let them. It's the quality of food that needs to change. Too much sugar, too many snacks, too much modified starch and industrialised vegetable oils. Too many additives - all to make people feel hungry for more - which is why so many people in the world are so fat, diabetic, subject to allergies and food intolerances. It's all connected.
The better the quality of food you eat - the less you want. I only have 2 meals a day now, because I only buy the best I can afford and grow the rest.
Instead of which, the food industry deliberately laces food with addictive substances to turn people into 'grazers.' More grazers in the world - the more land put over to agriculture.
Blame the corrupt food industry - not what people choose to eat.
Oh, and if you're vegan and like all those vegan burgers and other vegan fake meats, just turn that packet over, look at that immensely long ingredients list, and tell me if you know for absolutely sure if all those ingredients really are 'safe' to eat.
Beavers!!!
With big herbivores with no predators this habitat would face in time a decline in biodiversity. There are studies on impact of deer species only on insects, birds, rodents fauna. This has to be done very carefully to not have to many herbivors at the limited space. Only specific grasses and plants will be grazed, thus other shrub would florish.
Yeah at Knepp they sell some of the meat, so they are carefully controlling the numbers of these animals.
Good to see, but I pray that it's not to late.
People that think this is useless are baffling me.
Glad to see draco malfoy found his passion
😂That's harsh...but funny!
We should live a wildlife
Everything will be restored,rejuvenate,reform,regenerate, reimbursed,return.
I would vote for you and live in your country. Alas, why are we doomed to pavement?
@@kellychuba wildlife,a life with sacrifice of materialise world
I've just learned about rewilding a month ago, and now it's coming in droves. Looks like lots of other people have just learned it.
I don't expect wolves and bears to appear everywhere. However, I am noticing extreme overuse of this word, where it begins to be meaningless.
For example, I've just heard it "rewilding New York City." What it is is just a few breeding pairs of peregrine falcons living in NYC.
I also read things like "rewild your front yard!"
This is ridiculous. A few peregrine falcons don't make a rewilding. Nor is a front yard big enough to have any meaningful rewilding.
Getting a dog, a cat or a canary is not rewilding either.
ok you're an expert after just hearing about this one month ago FFS
@@Gos1234567 ok, you're bitter. I don't know why.
Omigosh. You missed the whole point in favor of being a negative grumpus.
@@kathynj6479 , what's the point?
If this basic note of caution sounds like negative grumping to you, you haven't seen anything negative yet. But you will.
I'm sorry if I don't fit your expectations. But so be it. I am what I am. I've been used and fooled too many times to be a cheerful trusting fool.
Our front yard was mostly lawn when we moved here 16 years ago. It had a nice pin oak which has continued to grow and support lots of wild birds and squirrels. We began to take out lawn and replacing it with native plants to attract native bees, butterflies, moths and a host of beneficial insects. Also persimmon trees, elderberry bush, winterberry, Asian pear (not native but a nice food source for us), serviceberry, red and black chokeberry and flowering dogwood were added or left to grow as birds introduced then to our front yard. Cedar waxwings ate our neighbors serviceberries, sat in our pin oak, pooped and we’ve been sharing serviceberry trees ever since. Rewilding can have many looks and meanings. As we share our stories maybe we can keep improving its meaning and benefit for all. This was just our front yard; you should see the other 3 sides of our house. 😁
You prefer government programs to corporations?
UK Government farming subsidies were being abused by corporations who were greenwashing.
Paying land owners large subsidies to re-wild their properties can create easily exploitable incentive structures. Paying farmers to shut down some percentage of their properties with the promise of goverment grants will only create unsustanible profit incentives.
nonsense
Google The Regen Network.
Add a wolf or two...Let them be 'cos there's so much to chew ...A great bib bear to chase a great big bovine and reduce the numbers of the pesky swine,,,
I've been to Knepp twice. Don't be fooled, it really isn't rewilded. Sure, there are a lot more bushes and shrubs than 90% of UK farms (which are horrific examples of ugly intense agriculture) but Knepp really isnt some nature haven. There are grazing animals everywhere so not really much in the way of wild flowers and smaller diverse plants can grow there. I'd say 80% of Knepp is still just open, flat grass fields chewed down to an inch off the ground. I've walked the entire 4 hour trail around the estate. Yes its a bit more harmonious with nature, and all farms that are in worse shape should strive to be at least as good as Knepp... but this isn't rewilding. Until natural predators like lynx, birds of prey and wolverines are back in the UK, there will never be wilderness that isnt fenced off, as the nationwide deer and sheep populations keep our landscaped barren and dead.
Thanks for adding this. Even from the video when they stated that it was "rewilding" when there were no predators (and other hallmarks of actual rewilding) involved had me raise an eyebrow and then the irony of having a segment about greenwashing at the end got me lol
Maybe if you paid attentiion while you where there you'd have learned its supposed to be like that. Britain and Europe weren't covered in continuous woodland but it was more woodland with patches of savannah which Knepp is trying to emuate hence why they keep the open spaces open with large herbivores.Also its only been 20 years since they started you can't expect the land to reover from intensive agriculture so easiliy.
@@SpaceMonkeyMDV Nope Britain would have been totally covered in woodland apart from some mountaineous areas
They show a clip of a cow munching away at a tree so im wondering how can this really work if they basically eat everything?
@@Gos1234567 Correct. Of course, England would naturally have deer and bovines (ancient cows etc) but with predators like wolves and lynx around a- the population is controlled and b- the herbivores are constantly being moved around thanks to the 'landscape of fear' so there is no scenario where they can just sit in one place and eat everything down to millimetres off the ground
Should we not put a cap on the number of houses being built and also on the amount of children families can have? Getting rid of so much farm land will have an impact on the amount of food that can be grown for this country, unless we buy it all from abroad?
We've been a net importer of food since the repeal of the corn laws in 1846. Turning over 1% of farmland land to rewilding will not shift the dial much given the potential benefits.
The people crossing the English Channel don't pay any attention to caps or laws of any type!
@@schumanhumanso won't more carbon be produced when we have to import all our food ????
You contradicting yourself...
Also you want to make our already precarious food supply under even more strain ??
Why can't a less densely populated country do this instead ??
We cannot afford to loose any more food production land .....
@@truthandfreedom9849 'so won't more carbon be produced when we have to import all our food '
Losing 1% of farmland obviously won't mean we import all our food. Farmers would use the least productive/fertile land for such purposes so the reduction in produce would likely be
@@schumanhuman it starts with 1% you mug .....
You simply contradicting yourself and the only way it will work is if you eat bugs ...... Which is what they are pushing so I hope you like being hungry and eating bugs in the name of a blatant scam ......
i am still kind of surprised that these owners still receive grants from the government when their business model in selling meat and in organising farm tours seem already profitable....
Like Sri Lanka then
Nope, not like sri lanka.
Wild cattle need horns so they have tools
I would wager a bet the moose was not ok! Ant living flesh and blood that impacts metal and steel at ANY speed will cause injury. Even broken bones may not be immediately evident!
Without the reintroduction of top predators, this is destined to fail.
It's just a fairy tale that make people feel warm and fuzzy.
If they don't, then it's not really rewilding so
We're the top predators.
Sitting on your couch, saying "Ah that's rubbish". How British.
Is Knapp expecting us to believe that none of those tall trees, shrubs and bushes were there until she brought in cattle, pigs and deer? That, somehow, they all just magically appeared and shot up, after?
Yes. They were there as a few sticks in a flailed hedgerow before flailing stopped and they were allowed to grow-out . Or as acorns & other tree seeds, which the deer and rabbits couldn't get to to destroy because of the fencing. Tomy knowledge they absolutely have not planted ANY TREES, SHRUBS or PLANTS AT ALL.😮
Yes, let's just pretend there were no trees there at all before they began rewilding. Did you miss the point in favor of being cynical?
Dave. Read the book, visit then change your mind.
You don't, becuase that's not a word.
They aren't really abandoning it though. They're just turning it into a garden with a dark ages vibe.
"Incredibly low carbon farming"......how about putting a number on it? Let me guess, they didn't do any calculation and if they do, they'll discover that it isn't incredibly low after all.
carbon? LOLOL
Why would it be high? Non-intensive farming promoting natural growth with minimal use of machinery.
@@dellwright1407 Non-intensive = inefficient. If you want to reduce emissions in the food chain, then grow vegetables, not livestock.
@@jeffbrunswick5511 an efficient system run at unsustainable scale (i.e. the current one) is more damaging than an allegedly inefficient system. But that's besides the point - studies show that re-wilding approaches ARE more efficient than the traditional non-closed system approaches. Why do people like you never do your own research? It took me 5 minutes to find papers (for example Joris P. G. M. Cromsigt et. al. Trophic rewilding as a climate change mitigation strategy? published in The Royal Society) backing up this perspective: rewilding can mitigate emission-driven climate change by a) naturally replacing domestic livestock species with wild species of similar biomass to produce less overall methane (aka 'biodiverse systems are better') b) reducing the frequency of wildfire driven by overgrazing which causes emissions through biomass burning but also, importantly, by increased albedo (look it up) - although the overall scale of potential benefit is admittedly unclear c) stopping the net removal of nutrients from soil (you people love to argue for current systems of large-scale production without realising that the quality of said produce is drastically declining) d) preventing and reversing loss of vegetation which acts as a carbon sink, i.e. the carbon sequestration benefit covered in this video. DO YOUR RESEARCH AND BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION, NOT THE PROBLEM.
@@5h5hz If you want to reduce emissions, grow vegetables and eat them yourself instead of feeding them to an animal that you later eat. The world human population is out of control. 1 billion people in 1900 and >12 billion by the end of this century. Rewilding a farm will achieve nothing compared to the global population increase.
Not sure rewilding should involve anything other than just leaving the land empty, untouched, unmanaged.. All seems a bit Alan Savory to me
Carbon doesn’t need to be “sequestered “. Carbon is the basis of all life. In the last 30 or so years, the “planet “ has seen a net “greening “ of some 17 to 21%, thanks largely to increased levels of carbon dioxide.
WTF just do nothing ! DUH.....
This is really common fecking sense you just need to be rich enough and subscribed to FT to be able to help....
If you struggle in some town house this is a fecking rich men`s dream.
Do something for the real World FT!!!!