Whilst it’s true that nothing is entirely natural any more in our human dominated
landscapes, we can still take pleasure in the way that wildlife responds
naturally to change. Indeed, part of the pleasure in watching wildlife comes from
the inherent role played by chance events and natural processes. Today a white
stork drifting across a clear blue sky in spring might be a genuinely wild bird, or it
might be an individual that has spent most of its life confined to a cage. In future
the same may be true for a whole range of species that have been hand-picked to
be ‘rewilded’.
Wouldn’t it be better, however, to exercise a little patience, and wait to see
which species respond naturally to the changing climate in the coming years? This,
surely, would be truer to one of the central tenets of rewilding, in allowing natural
processes more of a chance to play out unfettered by human interventions. And
it would certainly be cheaper and more likely to succeed. The selection of species
that arrive here would reflect the vagaries of nature and chance events rather than
yet more decisions and interventions made by humans. We could watch on, and
enjoy the magic of what unfolds before us, as we have done with the birds that
have already made it to our shores unaided.
The same might be said of species for which there is unambiguous evidence of
historical presence. For example, there is a growing interest in reintroducing the
Dalmatian pelican (e.g. Crees et al., 2022) a species lost from Britain, probably
through a combination of habitat loss, over-harvesting and climate change, during
the Medieval Cold Period. Populations of this species have responded positively
to conservation interventions, and a vagrant individual recently visited our
shores,21 indicating that sea crossings do not represent an insurmountable barrier.
21
A case is being built for reintroduction, which would result in a conservation
dependent
population geographically isolated from the nearest wild populations
and so requiring considerable micromanagement to ensure its long-term survival.
Although this is a justifiable reintroduction based on a human-mediated historical
extinction event, there would be a far greater pay-off in establishing a series of
sizeable wetland ‘stepping stones’ across Europe to connect southern England
to the Danube Delta. This would require more patience, but is far more likely to
succeed and would provide major benefits for local communities and for a huge
range of wetland wildlife. Another species, the pygmy cormorant, until recently
had a European distribution similar to that of the Dalmatian pelican, but it has
subsequently spread rapidly north-west; and the natural recolonisation of the great
white egret has been similarly swift. The old adage of ‘build it and they will come’
is likely to be very apt for pelicans and other highly mobile wetland birds.
But the more that humans take control of these decisions, drawing up a list
of desirable species and then installing them, the more artificial and less ‘wild’
our countryside begins to feel. We risk ‘dewilding’ rather than rewilding our
landscapes. Peter Marren (2002) asked whether we were in danger of ‘conserving
species at the expense of nature’ arguing that ‘reared animals become property …
they are part of our grand design, not nature’s. The friendliest cock-sparrow that
enters our gardens for the opportunities it finds there is wilder than the fierces
cage-reared eagle.’ As we have seen, if we wish to restore native species that were
eliminated at our hands, direct intervention is sometimes unavoidable; there
is no other option. But for species that are perfectly capable of colonising (or
recolonising) under their own steam, we should surely take th…
Extracts from a book chapter by Ian Carter and myself below www.nhbs.com/great-miscon... that dwell on the pelican proposal. We need to think big with wetland creation, not create expensive conservation dependent populations that may go extinct again #BuildItAndTheyWillCome 5/5
