i wrote a blog article, which was a news piece on the reintroduction of bison to the UK, in Kent of all places. Last week, India Bourke wrote an article in the New Statesman, called “Why rewilding isn’t just for toffs“. She argues, that, “Small-scale farmers can play their part in conservation – Monty Don risks putting them off.” The article talks about set-aside subsidy and Monty Don’s criticism of such programmes. This piqued my interest; here are my notes.
My next port of call was,
I am attracted to the drama of the Bisons in Kent and hope that we might do Bears and Wolves but looking at Rewilding Britain I see that a lot of less dramatic projects are in place which deserve support.
India says to me,
This is an excellent overview of the varied ways in which rewilding can be defined, which touches briefly on the notion of urban rewilding: https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cobi.13730
I’d also recommend Cal Flynn’s recent book, Islands of Abandonment, for a different way of thinking about what spaces have rewilding potential.
And then there’s a ton of initiatives (which I’m keen to write on more this coming year), from urban tree planting to energygardens, that are bringing the wild back to the city.
I realise that these aren’t rewilding in its purest form, but I do believe that they could be part of a connected movement. And things like the trespass movement are also helping to forge these links.
i wonder how much we lost in set-aside subsidy from the EU’s CAP. DEFRA publish their stats on the web, but not broken down into pillars! I have also found,
- Common Agricultural Policy at the Institute for Govt. which does have the aggregate expense for the two pillars for 2015
- The Agriculture Act 2020 from the HoC Library details the CAP spend of £3,5bn which the Govt is set to match
- lmgtfy q= “how much did the EU’s CAP pay to UK in 2020 for set-aside”
- lmgtfy q=”how much did the CAP pay to UK in 2020 for set-aside” better HMG sources.