What we've been reading - Wilding by Isabella Tree
It’s easy to let climate anxiety horrify and overwhelm us in what is now termed Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder. COP26 was another dithering step towards what needs to be done right now, which is to halve our global emissions by the end of this decade. We as individuals simply cannot leave others to make the change. Our allusion of entitlement to delivery on demand, two hot holidays a year and the studied indifference to public transport is tantamount to digging our own graves.
As to the anxiety and stress, is there any hope? I think so. A book in my never dwindling pile patiently waited its turn since Christmas and is the best of this year’s crop in my opinion. Wilding by Isabela Tree tells the story of Knepp estate in Sussex, a working farm of 3,500 acres. All arable projects and livestock plans were failing but a chance fact-finding meeting with an arborist opened up a totally different approach to how to steward the land. The Burrell family took a huge risk by wilding Knepp. Terrain that had been ‘managed’ for decades was left to regenerate by itself. Left undisturbed. Unploughed, untilled untreated. Farm machinery and all associated accoutrements were sold. Proxy species of what would have been autochthonous herds, and other animals were brought to the land and within almost no time, miraculous changes started to happen. Within three or four years, species long since forgotten and high up on the endangered lists reappeared on this experimental site. Blue emperor butterflies, nightingales, and all sorts of creatures that haven’t been seen for decades suddenly alighted and began to thrive at Knepp.
There’s enough scientific information in Wilding to demonstrate that this is not just a happy story of a return to a long-lost halcyon. Rewilding works. And with some proper backing from government, it could be a very powerful way to reverse some of the poison and pollutive havoc humankind wreaks on its surroundings. Carbon sequestration could be tilled into the soil if only we stopped our ridiculous compaction of the ground through intensive production. Soil can store carbon but not if we root it all up and then stamp on it with grazing sheep and cattle. If we fed our livestock differently, the nutrition we derive from them would be much higher, and we wouldn’t have to pump them full of grains which their stomachs can’t digest, producing more hydrocarbon by way of methane. Earthworms, the de rigeur pocket content of small boys, have an extraordinary druidical ability to rid the soil of heavy metals and other toxins through their digestive tracts. We must allow them to flourish and not compact their underground apothecary with heavy machinery and the trample of ovine stilettoes.
Our need to compartmentalise, separate, control and maximise each individual element of ecology has driven out the very essence of the symbiosis required for complex interdependency. Pesticides, nitrogen and phosphates have killed off the essential tool of agronomy, mycorrhizae, a type of fungal life which acts as early warning and defence system, larder and communication network between all living cells.
In 2014, Farmer’s Weekly predicted that due to the compaction and depletion of our eroded topsoil, the UK has only 100 harvests left. Think famine struck African nations, only with rock, clay and chalk, but barren nonetheless. That is what our grandchildren will be scratching their lives from unless we make radical changes. What will they think of our hot holidays in air-conditioned Dubai then? This book is the first sign of real hope I have felt for a long time. I salute the bravery of the Burrell family who broke with tradition, did battle to bring family stakeholders round, and sat watching in their own anxiety as ‘order’ turned to ‘chaos’ with nothing but faith to keep them going. The friend who gave me the book wrote a dedication - hope through action. Obviously, it’s going to take a little more than No Mow May to turn the tide. But we have very little time left before we are left high and dry.