Rewilder Weekly #39 🦬🌳🐺🌞🌍
Welcome to the latest edition of the Rewilder Weekly! 🦬🌳🐺🌞🌍
Before we get going, allow me to highlight the Highlands Rewilding board’s update. The work they do on three Scottish estates (Bunloit, Beldorney and Tayvallich) is as inspiring as it is important. But their experience also shows the financial challenges many nature recovery-focused organizations are faced with. Everything they do, and plan to do going forward, is with the aim of continuing and further increasing rewilding efforts.
Please take a moment to read the update and then, if you think you can help - get in touch with them. In their words: “If you see any possibilities to work with us on any of the above, or for people or organisations in your networks so to do, please get in touch. Please also get in touch if you would like to see the land and property brochures when they become available. Please wish us luck, and for those of you of faith, please include us in your appeals and thanks. We are taking big risks on a very tough frontier, as you all know, in the hope of helping to face down existential threats to cohesive society.”
Now then, let’s get on with this week’s eight selected stories.
Wishing you a good week.
Cheers,
👉 As a reminder: If you come across stories you’d like to see featured in an upcoming edition of the Rewilder Weekly, send them to me and I’ll gladly do what I can.
1) Can beavers help save Britain’s salmon?
After the beaver documentaries Beavers Without Borders (2020) and On The Edge (2022), Beaver Trust and filmmaker Nina Constable bring you the latest documentary funded by The European Nature Trust - this one focusing on the relationship between reintroduced beavers and the conservation needs of migratory fish populations. The video clip is just the trailer, of course. Narrated by none other than Joanna Lumley, the brand-new documentary will premiere in various places across Britain between February and March. Find the dates in the article.
But wait! Until we all get see it in full, follow the above two links to watch the previous films. The topic of the relationship between beavers and fish is broached in Beavers without Borders, too, by the way. Ecologist and angler Duncan Pepper explains that the salmon’s latin name salmo salar (salar meaning leaping), indicates nicely that they have no problems with beaver dams, after all, beaver and salmon have co-evolved for tens of thousands of years. Pepper goes further and says unequivocally that, “there’s no doubt on my mind that there are more fish where there are beavers.”
👉 Go here for the article about the new film
👉 and here for a world of beaver-y insight from the Beaver Trust
2) Promoting human-wildlife coexistence in India
The Global Rewilding Alliance keeps on growing! More than 200 partners already form part of GRA, all of them focused on restoring and safeguarding nature. Just last week they welcomed The Corbett Foundation to the alliance. TCF’s work, focused on India, impacts 800 villages across six states.
GRA writes that, “The Foundation is a beacon for species and habitat conservation, focusing on flagship species such as the Bengal Tiger, Asian Elephant, Sloth Bear, Great Indian Bustard, Lesser Florican, Indian Leopard, and critically endangered vultures. By addressing the challenges of human-wildlife negative interactions, restoring degraded habitats, and promoting sustainable livelihoods, TCF paves the way for a future where humans and wildlife coexist in harmony.”
👉 and here to engage on LinkedIn
3) Putting a value on nature
A good article, entitled “What Price a Pinewood?”, by Matthew Hay, a natural capital consultant and a director of Reforesting Scotland. He writes, “Nature and the economy have never been easy bedfellows. Perhaps the fact we talk about them as a dichotomy is where the problem begins. Rather than seeing the economy as being embedded in the natural world, separating the two makes it easier to maintain an extractive mindset and play down the costs humanity imposes.”
Important for thought in this first of two articles about putting a value on nature. Change we must, we all know it. And whether it’s a carbon coin backed by the world’s central banks (as recounted in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry for the Future), or a type of universal basic income for people engaged in restoring and safeguarding nature - something will have to happen so that people, economies of every size, entire countries and regions, are no longer dependent on degrading nature to generate income, to generate economic prosperity. The theories are out there - it’s just that no one has really been able to break the mold of the old system - so far!
4) The sheer awesomeness of the lynx
I was going to write up an intricately-sourced piece about the importance and many facets of the return of the lynx to Scotland. Instead it’s become a joyride of lynx awesomeness. Despite the truly unfortunate bump in the lynx restoration road with those recent illegal releases, and despite the ill-considered remark by Scotland’s First Minister (more on that here by Scotland: The Big Picture’s Peter Cairns), I am convinced that, before long, the lynx will roam again in Scotland.
So just how awesome is the lynx? Well, did you know that the lynx: can fish?; wears snow shoes?; climbs trees faster than a squirrel?; purrs just like your cats at home (and sometimes screeches like them, too)? Read the article, watch the clips and I’m pretty sure that you’ll be moved, thrilled, excited, stunned or awed - or all of that - and you’ll exclaim, “We want the lynx now!”, because you’ll want that awesomeness in your countryside.
👉 Go here for the article and clips of awesomeness
👉 and here to engage on LinkedIn
5) Rewilding at every scale: it’s newt time!
More often than not, when people hear about rewilding for the first time, they hear of big projects, such as the restoration of rivers and peatlands, or reforestation efforts of native woods, or the seawilding of kelp forests and coral reefs, or ecosystem engineers such as large herbivores and carnivores, or the amazing work of beavers … but rewilding happens - and needs to happen - at every scale. Insects, invertebrates, fungi, you name it. These projects are often twice as challenging as they happen, seemingly, sight unseen. Luckily, the great crested newt is getting the attention it needs!
A new study looks back six years of habitat creation and restoration in England by the Newt Conservation Partnership. Monitoring results show that the efforts have led to pond occupancy rates substantially higher than national and regional averages - in addition, those ponds have also attracted rare plant species in growing numbers year after year. Nattergal writes: “Great Crested Newts clearly took advantage of the new high-quality habitat very quickly. As other clean waterbodies are created or restored by the Nattergal team as part of the rewilding process, the newts and the other plants and animals living in (or associated with) ponds will be able to once again thrive in this landscape.”
👉 Go here for the 24-page report
👉 and here to engage on LinkedIn
6) Beaver dam becomes wildlife passage
Human endeavors have, for many hundreds of years now, increasingly disrupted the natural flow of water. Nowadays it is widely known that the blocking, damming, channeling, concreting and plastering of river ways is increasing flood risks, drought risks, and massive degrades biodiversity. Rewilding Europe’s Rewilding Oder Delta operation is hard at work to get that supremely important natural flow back.
In his post, Frans Schepers writes that, “The return of more natural water flow is bringing positive change, boosting biodiversity, enhancing the positive climate impact of the landscape, and enriching lives and livelihoods.” Just watch the above clip and you’ll get an amazing sense of just how richly nature returns, when given the opportunity - in this case, created by the incredible ecosystem engineers that are the beavers.
👉 and here to engage on LinkedIn
7) When rivers run free
Following the previous story, here’s another wonderful article, this one by SBP’s Aidan MacCormick, about free-flowing rivers, particularly Scotland’s River Feshie in the Cairngorms. “Dynamic habitats like this,” he writes, “where nature is left to flex its muscles unimpeded, are rare in Scotland. While we see coastal landscapes shift dramatically according to tides and storms, change inland is less obvious and often discouraged.”
The article’s beautiful as it is both insightful and personal - showing just how much we can glean, experience, enjoy and learn, when we allow ourselves to linger and take it all in. To give you a sense, here’s a passage: “I’m sitting by the water’s edge, watching a dragonfly slowly unfurl in the warm June sunshine. A few minutes later, it takes off on a very wobbly maiden flight. Then, almost immediately, a wagtail snatches it mid-air, rips off the barely dry wings, crunches it into a ball and feeds it to its chicks nestled in the roots of an alder tree. I’m left reeling. I’d become emotionally invested in this dragonfly after watching it emerge and take flight. It had spent three years living as a nymph, only for its adult life to be over in minutes.”
👉 and here to engage on LinkedIn
8) Who’s killing all the sheep? (Hint: it’s not the wolf)
Over the course of the past few years, farming and hunting lobbies have been fearmongering against the wolf with ever greater success. Protections have been lowered across Europe and more and more of the wolves that returned over past decades and now slaughtered once more - for the most part for no good reason. Why the scapegoating focus? Because it works, and because it obfuscates where the real culprits are.
This example from Switzerland: On average there are over 300’000 sheep in Switzerland. Of those, the official record of 2024 shows that an incredible 56’838 sheep died because of diseases, parasites, extreme weather, accidents and ill treatment. This isn’t about the good farmers, and these are not isolated incidents. These numbers clearly show widespread bad management, lack of responsibility, laissez-faire attitude and downright animal cruelty. During the same year, wolves were responsible for about 1’000 sheep deaths, a mere fraction of those over 56’000. But wolves are decried and slaughtered, while the aforementioned many, many more deaths (and number of deaths continue to rise) barely receive attention.
👉 Go here to engage on LinkedIn and articles
As usual, the Rewilder Weekly concludes with a nature science illustration. This time science illustrator Beverly McKay (paper.nautilus.illustrations on Instagram) regales us with a watercolor illustration of the crested lark (galerida cristata). She explains:
“The crested lark is a musical, non-endangered bird found from northern and eastern Africa through the Middle East and Eurasia to India. You see the lark perched on turnsole, (heliotropium kotschyi), (rannam in Arabic) an extremely common desert perennial in the UAE. Plants of the genus heliotropium are noted for producing various alkaloids. Caterpillars, eg. the crimson speckled footman, (utetheisa pulchella), feed on this plant to accumulate toxins that will protect them as adults from predators. The "aposematic" colouration of this small but strikingly coloured moth is a warning to birds, "don't eat me, I am poisonous!" It begs the question, why aren't these poisonous moths (seen lower left) more common if they can't be eaten by birds? Their eggs and caterpillars can be eaten when they are very tiny and have not yet accumulated very much plant toxins. So they get eaten by reptiles, spiders and other insects, which in turn are eaten by larger predators.”
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That’s it for this week’s edition! For more rewilding insights and stories from around the globe, use the #rewilding hashtag on LinkedIn and follow people, organizations and groups that are as passionate about rewilding as you are. Let’s keep connecting and growing the movement!