Near
Horsham in West Sussex is a castle estate called ‘Knepp Estate,’ which,
alongside farming, has let a great deal of the estate return to the wild.
Medium-sized herbivores such as longhorn cattle, roe and fallow deer, Exmoor
ponies and pigs roam freely on the estate. So far, these rewilding techniques
have regenerated the soil’s nutrient quality, making farming once again viable near
the site, whereas traditional intensive farming had rendered the soil
unworkable without large quantities of chemical fertiliser; farming is finally
profitable once again in the area.
The
benefits of rewilding are numerous; vastly increased biodiversity and carbon
sequestration, as well as social benefits such as those George Monbiot wrote
about in Feral; the sense of
adventure and wonder that is lost without true, unadultered wilderness. The
cause of this article is not to reiterate these benefits. I am simply looking
at a common cause for human intervention in rewilding projects; fencing out or
culling herbivores.
Knepp estate has had to fence off
certain areas of land to guarantee that young trees and other vegetation will
survive undamaged by the grazing and browsing habits of the herbivores present.
It is the intensive grazing of the ‘white plague’ of sheep and other large herbivores
such as deer and cattle, kept for commercial use, that has helped transform the
British Isles into monolithic and expansive grassland. As a natural process in
a pre-human past, grazing and other herbivorous habits helped create
mosaic-like environments of grassland, scrub and woodland believed to have
existed in the Pleistocene era. In the Pleistocene, however, there were
predators to maintain herbivore population and also their behaviours and
approaches to their environment. The herbivores that existed were also diverse
in species and especially size, with even Britain hosting megafauna; the
skeletons of ancient hippopotami have been found underneath central London.
Interestingly enough, Knepp Estate’s aims are to add more species of herbivore,
to include elk and bison.
Dundreggan,
an area that rewilding organisation Trees
For Life have been working on in the Scottish Highlands, has had success by
fencing out the red deer that are endemic to the area. The result has been a
surge in young tree growth and inception, sometimes species that one wouldn’t
expect to find, all without much human planting necessary. The biodiversity in
the area is vibrant, with more than 3,000 new species recorded in Dundreggan alone.
The area is lacking a natural predator, specifically the wolf; were a wolf
present, the organisation would no longer need to fence out the deer, as the
wolves would maintain their population by preying on the weak and sickly deer,
altering the deer behaviour by scaring them away from open spaces, such as open
land on the fringes of forests, and also stretches of open water where a deer
may be more at risk. This has a chain reaction, that has been highlighted with
the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in America; as the
deer left open water alone, trees were allowed to grow along the waters edge,
shading and cooling down the water, making it habitable for fish and other
animals which helped filter the water of impurities. Knepp estate fenced off an
area of newly-planted trees along the Adur river, to eventually grow to cover
the water and cool it down, in a venture the Ouze & Adure River Trust
termed ‘trees for trout,’ and effect which Yellowstone has achieved through the
reintroduction of natural predators.
Trees for life currently run a
volunteering programme called ‘project wolf’ wherein volunteers emulate wolf
behaviour to scare deer away from the vulnerable rewilded areas. Many concerned
with reintroducing a natural predator to the British Isles have claimed that
the Eurasian lynx would be the least problematic predator to reintroduce to the
British wild lands. With a Pleistocene rewilding project such as Knepp Estate,
what predator should be present? If one could be decided upon, in this present
day with many stakeholders in rural areas so set against the reintroduction of
predators, could it be emulated, such as the project wolf campaign? The estate
already cull their animals to maintain a natural population, and so the need
for a natural predator has not gone unobserved. Species are being reintroduced
in Britain, albeit at a slow pace, and the predator question is enshrouded in
cultural myths of fear, which forces rewilding organisations to sadly intervene
where another ecological relationship has been persecuted and removed over
time.
Referenced:
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