BOOK REVIEW - WILDING

WILDING, by Isabella Tree, is the true story of ‘the return of nature to a British Farm’. Since 1945 the driving forces of governmental directions were to provide as much food as possible by ‘feeding’ the soil with artificial fertilizers. By the year 2000 the family farming business at Knepp had a 1.5m overdraft and the chance of increased profitability had gone. They sold the dairy herd and all the expensive agricultural machinery which then paid for the overdraft.

And still this goes on as other farms are continuing with intensive agriculture. It can be said that the crime of impoverishing our soils is the greatest crime of all. What is in the soil enters the food chain and is consumed by humans. Do we know what we are really eating?

This is contained within the three hundred pages as 3,500 acres of ‘pristine’ farmland has been returned to itself. The perception of what we think that our natural environment should be like, is rooted in, what we have had to believe how it was in the very natural sense. Arguments were raised and fortunately the experiment in The Netherlands at Oostvaardersplassen showed them what they could do although there would be restrictions at Knepp. Common access across the estate would cause decisions to be made that, for example, would prevent the introduction of Wild Boar.

Highlighted are the benefits of the grazing of natural grasslands with the animals being able to select what they wanted to eat. The same can be said by bushes and trees that can be ‘grazed’ too. Now we can hear of ‘grass-grazed beef’. Meat produced not by being corn fed, but by allowing animals to have a life.

It is a book that contains much information giving facts and figures from around Europe. The story of re-wilding challenges conventional ideas about our past and present landscape. It talks of a countryside that benefits farming, nature and us. It allows the wildlife to return to a habitat in which they can return, live and re-produce. The birds, butterflies and insects have returned because someone decided to be bold. I am happier now that I have read this story and live in the hope that attitudes and perceptions will change and we can re-wild more.