It’s hard to look back sometimes, and to remember the grandeur that once cloaked the British Isles: the dripping rainforests, the roaming herds of herbivores, and the winding rivers filled with fish.
True wilderness hasn’t existed on these intensively farmed islands for thousands of years, of course, and there’s no getting it back now. But rewilding promises to return a sliver of it to the modern landscape: a path into the future inspired by the world that once was.
That’s the idea, anyway. In practice, rewilding has sometimes been a tough sell. While many people are excited by the possibilities of a wilder countryside, for others the idea is toxic; they see wildness as incompatible with the rich tapestries that generations of humans have since woven into the soil. In today’s storied landscapes, rewilding must grapple not only with ecological complexities but also the multiplicity of human needs, emotions and memories.
